DRM at what Cost?
EDN - The war on copying
By Nicholas Cravotta
EDN Magazine 10/16/2003.
This magazine that deals with electrical design has a thoughtful cover story on Digial Rights Management (DRM) that discusses the social issues as much as the technical issues.
Many companies mistakenly focus on the technology when trying to understand DRM and fail to consider the real social issues that managing content involves. For example, DRM schemes that tie content to a single PC fail to address the needs of, say, a child of divorced parents who lives in two homes. Even more common is the person who wants to play music at home, at work, in the car, on a portable player, and at a friend’s house. The killer app for digital content is the connected home, yet most DRM schemes undermine consumers’ ability to easily move content between devices. Protection isn’t just about security; you need to consider convenience, as well.
Over at Slashdot there is one of those seemingly endless
discussions of this article.