DRM Helmet 209
prostoalex writes "In his weblog on O'Reilly Network Gordon Mohr suggests the ultimate solution for the music and movie industry to plug that analog hole. The solution, of course, is a helmet with built-in Digital Rights Management system that would automatically "fog up" any time you lay your eyes on something that you haven't bought license for."
fifth avenue (Score:3, Informative)
What'd this helmet do to walking down the street? Would you have to buy the rights to your walk to work so you didn't get hurt, kinda like seatbelts Buy the rights - it's for your own protection?"
I realise it's a stretch and that people walk down the street all the time, but if there's one thing we've learned about the copyright industry it's that it's real good at pulling fast ones.
Triv
/.ed (Score:3, Informative)
DRM Helmets: An Idea Whose Time Has Come by Gordon Mohr Jun. 7, 2002
The CBDTPA could require billions of individual "digital media devices" -- every TV, stereo, speaker, PC, walkman, hard drive, monitor, and scanner -- to carry enforcement circuitry -- but there are only 300 million people in the country. Mathematically astute readers will note that's less than 600 million each of eyes and ears.
Further, a single economical helmet can cover four of these analog holes at once!
I humbly suggest the most cost-effective and reliable solution to the copyright industries' troubles will be DRM helmets, bolted onto each dutiful consumer at the neck. When these helmets sense watermarked audio or video within earshot/eyeshot, they check their local license manager and instantly "fog up" if payment has not been delivered.
This will especially teach people not to use unauthorized copies of music while driving.
By bolting a suitably-small DRM helmet onto people at an appropriately-early age, the citizenry's consumptive habits can be "arrested" (along with cranial volume) at a revenue-maximizing developmental stage. I'd guess this is around age 13, but I'm open to the latest research. Give and take is what policymaking is all about.
So step up to the plate, senators, lobbyists, and titans of industry. Write this into the next rev of the CBDTPA. Why try to imperfectly plug billions of analog holes, when you can just cap the problem at far fewer endpoints? The end-to-end design principle is your friend!
[Intellectual Property Disclosure: The "DRM Helmet" and the "Cranial Arrest Adolescent DRM Helmet" may be covered by patents granted or applied for by Gordon Mohr. Licensing will be available on unreasonable and discriminatory terms.]
Gordon Mohr is the founder and Chief Technology Officer of Bitzi [bitzi.com], a cooperative, universal metadata catalog for all kinds of discrete files. Gordon's personal page is at http://xavvy.com [xavvy.com].
Re:fifth avenue (Score:3, Informative)
Probably wouldn't help you in New York, but English copyight law says that incidental use doesn't matter. i.e. if you're interviewing someone in their office and a television's on in the background, nobody will care that you've "copied" the TV signal.
Presumably this applies to building also. I suppose it explains why everybody does their filming in Canada, and why New York is getting screwed of possible income from filming.
Re:An even better solution... (Score:3, Informative)
record companies are the same way:
them: your album isn't selling well enough, so you're fired, and your album is being deleted from our catalog.
you: but it's critically acclaimed, and we have a growing cult following!
them: but if we hire a group of dancing monkeys and dress them up like 30-year olds pretending to be teenagers, we'll sell millions.
you: fine, i'll take my album elsewhere.
them: no you won't. we're holding onto it in case you become popular on another label.
you: but it's my album.
them: no it's not. check your contract and then fuck off.
sometimes they even refuse to release an album but won't let the artist have the masters. buncha pricks.
Re:An even better solution... (Score:5, Informative)
That is such garbage (or a pretty good troll). Bill purchased the Bettman Archive, true. But Corbis has preserved the collection through custom storage at the Iron Mountain facility. The collection was literally disintegrating at it's former home. They've also made more than twice as many (so far) images available as were ever available previously. (And only a few hundred prints account for over 70% of the requested images. People keep asking for the same things.) They are digitizing the collection but it's a huge task. And if you don't want the watermark, buy the print! It's that simple. Access to the archive is not as open as it once was. But if it hadn't been moved to Iron Mountain, it would be lost forever. The low temperature and correct humidity of Iron Mountain will preserve the collection indefinitely so that more and more of it can be known.