I moderated this session and thus (ironically?) am unable to blog about its content in a trustworthy way. (Nathan Torkington has blogged a rough transcript of the session.)

The session was way too short and I found it frustrating not to be able to drive issues very deeply. My take-away was pretty depressing, from my point of view: there is a generally shared assumption here (as far as I can tell) that of course DRM is a technology issue, that so long as the technology allows for the enforcement of a wide range of usage policies, then the technology is itself neutral. But it’s not. The transfer of the application of rules from humans to machines is not neutral. Software has no judgment. It is incapable of judging context or intention. We thus are going to get for digital content the dystopia we’ve been imagining for 100 years: an absolutist bureaucracy that believes that the perfect world is the one in which rules are enforced perfectly.

The DRM Paradox

I asked why we don’t have DRM yet and one of the panelists said that it was because users are happy with things the way they are. I wanted to say – but didn’t because I was the moderator – that you get a paradox if you put that together with what Doc Searls said yesterday: DRM won’t take off until someone builds something that users actually want. Well, the market has spoken. DRM is a constriction. We don’t want it. So it can only come into existence by being imposed, for it is doing to users something that we don’t want done to us.

That’s not to say that if the market wants free CDs, it should get free CDs. But it does at least mean that claiming that DRM is a user service is a crock. If it’s something that, for the sake of establishing a sustainable marketplace, has to be crammed down the throat of users, then let’s at least admit it. (But, see the next point…)

The DRM Fallacy

“The technology merely enables users and vendors to negotiate a license.” “This is purely opt-in. If a user doesn’t like a license agreement, he doesn’t have to say yes.”

These would be good arguments if the market weren’t already skewed by an OS monopoly and a content cartel. “Opting out” of seeing Hollywood movies is like opting out of our culture. We can always be media hermits. Some choice.

(Chris RageBoy Locke, my friend and co-author, says that this focuses too much on Mass Media and ignores the many voices that will come from the grass roots. Definitely. But although mass media may not be the only source, it is one that people will continue to care about.)

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