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Doctorow on DRM and Activism 154

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the accountability-is-dead dept.
Might E. Mouse writes "Cory Doctorow, co-editor of 'the world's most linked-to' blog, BoingBoing, spoke recently at an event in London, UK. Afterwords, he gave an interview with bit-tech discussing topics like DRM and the commercialization of podcasting. He was particularly scathing towards the BBC. From the article: 'If you're in the UK, hold the BBC to account. Why is it shipping the IMP, a DRM crippled player? Is there a point in the future where the BBC imagines that bits are going to get harder to copy? And that the IMP will solve its problem? Really, what the BBC is saying is that there's two ways you can get its content after it airs on the TV; one is that you can get it through the IMP and have a crippled experience, the other is that you can be a criminal.'"
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Doctorow on DRM and Activism

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  • Cory's only interested in the latest episode of The IT Crowd [boingboing.net].
    • That and those super-exciting anagram transit maps. Lawsy, child! I can't get enough of those anagram transit maps. They're CrAzY!
      • Personally, I'm waiting for another short(!?) roundup on the Sony DRM debate [boingboing.net] ;)

        between those and the rather unfortunate things unicorn chasers (usually required apart from the most recent) I don't know how I would get through the day.

      • Re:Priorities (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Bazman ( 4849 )
        Yeah. Fan. Tastic.

        I'm sure boingboing used to be good, and really was a directory of wonderful things, but nowadays it just Cory talking in the third person ("Cory's New Podcast", "Cory's New SciFi Story With The Same Name As An Asimov Classic"), links to the editors' blogs (normally headed 'last week I blogged') which just look like lame efforts at self-advertising a blog entry that didnt get enough clicks to satisfy their ego, vaguely sexual stuff from Xeni, random in-joke memes (today: anagram maps), and

        • Re:Priorities (Score:4, Funny)

          by arodland ( 127775 ) on Monday February 27, 2006 @01:33PM (#14809698)
          You're complaining about a website going downhill and posting inane shit that doesn't interest you (or anyone).

          I've got a newsflash for you: You read Slashdot. You have no right to comment on this topic.

          We now return to our regularly scheduled program, brought to you by Scuttlemonkey.

        • Re:Priorities (Score:3, Funny)

          by tpgp ( 48001 )
          I'm sure boingboing used to be good,....

          If there's one thing sadder then someone complaining about /, on /., it's someone complaining about some other blog on slashdot.

          I guess it could have been worse - you could have been talking about the wonders of digg...
          • If there's one thing sadder then someone complaining about /, on /.

            According to whois, no one has registered slashcomma.org. Any takers? If you do, please post here and let me know...why.

      • I have been thinking the same thing. I love almost everything on that site, but those anagram maps are fucking annoying.
    • ...which airs on Channel 4 and not the BBC, so he's not going to get it through this system anyway.

      Oh well.

  • A speech he gave in 2004 (Score:3, Informative)

    by truthsearch ( 249536 ) on Monday February 27, 2006 @01:11PM (#14809488) Homepage Journal
    Back in '04 Cory Doctorow gave an interesting speech about DRM to the Microsoft Research department [msversus.org]. He released it into the public domain, so share it with your friends (and DRM enemies).

  • There is no technical solution to a social problem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Monday February 27, 2006 @01:14PM (#14809523)
    No social problem ever had a technical solution. Not a single one. You can use netnanny to keep your kids from watching "bad" pages, but the kid will eventually find a way around. You can copy protect your content, but your user will sooner or later find a way around it.

    The problem is not that we enjoy being criminals. We don't do that out of spite. Not even because "content must be free" or similar rubbish. It's simply that we're used to listening to our music where we want, recording our favorite movies to watch them later, using our computers for the games we want to play, reading the news we want to read. That's what we want to do, that's what we enjoy doing.

    And if you turn this ability off, people will develop a way to do it regardless.

    Why was there a big outcry when CSS went onto Linux? Not because the CSS "encryption" was broken, but because the country codes were stripped together with it. And why were they stripped? Because we have no benefit from then, we don't want them, we don't need them, actually they did what we did NOT want to be done, so they were gone before they were implemented!

    Face it. People will do what they want to do. The question whether they will buy or copy content can only be answered by its price. Make it affordable, make the value match the price and people will rather buy than copy. Whether it's copy protected or not will only decide whether you piss off the buying customer and create another copyer, not whether you will sell or not.
    • Right on.
    • So true. I use one of those streaming music services. They have hit the price-point that works for me. For $8 per month, I get access to their library of music, which is something like 1 million songs (I don't know, actually). Yes, I don't get to "own" this music, but I don't really care that much, since the price is pretty negligable. I never buy CDs anymore. I used to buy several CDs per month at about $15/pop, listen to them a few times each, then shelve them. Now, I am spending a fifth of that, and I ha
    • There most certainly are technical solutions to a social problems!

      Locks and car alarms are "good enough" solutions to prevent vehicle theft. Are they fool proof? Of course not. Am I inconvenienced by having to carry around keys and remember to lock/unlock doors? Yes. But I prefer not to have bums sleeping in my car, or people yanking anything in view simply because they can without any effort. And yes, I've had my car broken into (security defeated). It makes me want to find ways to make things more secured

      • Re:There is too technical solution to social probs (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Crazy Man on Fire ( 153457 ) on Monday February 27, 2006 @02:07PM (#14810021) Homepage
        Locks and car alarms are "good enough" solutions to prevent vehicle theft. Are they fool proof? Of course not. Am I inconvenienced by having to carry around keys and remember to lock/unlock doors? Yes. But I prefer not to have bums sleeping in my car, or people yanking anything in view simply because they can without any effort. And yes, I've had my car broken into (security defeated). It makes me want to find ways to make things more secured, not less.
        You're missing the point. I don't think anybody would argue that car locks and computer security measures are bad. These things prevent others from using your property. They don't prevent from using your own property. Your car's security system doesn't prevent it from driving on certain types of roads. Your computer security doesn't force you to pay $0.25 to log on each time you boot up. The problem with DRM is that it stops the consumer from using content that they paid for. The rights of the consumer are more important than the rights of the content providers. Unfortunately, most of the populace doesn't care or understand that they are losing out because they have their whiz-bang iPod and plasma TV.
        • That is the crux of the problem with content: Users do not buy content, they buy a license to use it. Arguing otherwise is simplistic and disingenuous. Arguing "against DRM" is also problematic, because it is an untenable position.

          If you were right, and we all "owned" every bit of IP we obtained on CDs, DVDs, and whatever else, then yes, DRM would just be a hinderance. DRM (quite obviously) is supposed to protect [content makers] from [users who are trying to rip it off].

          Trying to treat IP "content" as a "r
          • I agree with some of your points, and my language wasn't clear. I'm not against DRM period. I'm against DRM that prevents users from doing "reasonable" things with content that they are licensed to use. Restrictive license agreements are BS.

            People who bought an early HDTV with only composite inputs should not be prevented from getting a full HD signal when watching their (to be released) HD-DVDs or BlueRay discs.

            People who buy a CD should not be prevented from ripping it to their portable music player, c
          • That is the crux of the problem with content: Users do not buy content, they buy a license to use it. Arguing otherwise is simplistic and disingenuous.

            Except that things are advertised with the likes of "own it on DVD". Rather than "Buy some rights to watch it in ways acceptable to us on DVD". The media (including some proprietary software) companies want to be able to sell a mass market product whilst at the same time having a contract which restricts what the customer can and can't do with the product.
          • If you fail to see the need for DRM, you can't be taken very seriously.

            Record lables make billions selling completely unprotected CDs, and Hollywood makes billions selling DVDs with trivially defeatable CSS. When they say they won't release content without "unbreakable" DRM, they're lying. And even if they weren't, Cory is absolutely right in that *if* we have to choose between computing freedom and the entertainment industry's business models, it should be a no-brainer.
      • that car locks, firewalls, apartment doors and alarms offer ME some service. They protect ME from someone wanting to steal from me. And rightfully so. Nobody but me has the right to use my property, for any kind of reason. I can borrow my car to a friend, if I choose so. For money, or for free. But when I do so, I hand over my property fully. There is no shackles that tie him to the pedals so he won't let Bobby Joe drive (even if I explicitly forbid him to give the car to Bobby Joe 'cause I don't like him).
        • Would I even think of removing the locks from my car and hotwire it 'cause it's an inconvenience to carry those keys around? Of course not! Those keys protect my property! Yes, DRM also protects the property of the content provider. But unlike with me, my car and the bum (compared to the content provider, the content and me), the bum has NO right to use my car in whatever way. He did not pay for using it. I did pay to use the content.

          In this bizarre rambling you managed to undermine your own argument. I'm
    • The question whether they will buy or copy content can only be answered by its price. Make it affordable, make the value match the price and people will rather buy than copy.

      This doesn't make any sense. Copying digital content will always be free, and thus impossible to compete with in terms of price alone. This is why copyright exists in the first place. The only ways to make copying something "more expensive", and thus give the content creators the ability to compete are to make it artificially difficu
      • Copying digital content will always be free, and thus impossible to compete with in terms of price alone. This is why copyright exists in the first place.

        You are so wrong it isn't even funny. Copyright exists to promote the creation of new art. Anything else is an unwanted side effect. As for competing with free, look up the business case for selling bottled water. On a free market, people will pay whatever a good is worth to them. This "free market" I speak of can not be regulated by state-imposed monop

        • Copyright exists to promote the creation of new art.

          Um, yeah. And how does it do that? By granting the creator exclusive rights over his creation. You can't rely on the difficulty of copying the medium to protect the content. That would be saying that it's ok for anybody with a printing press to copy your book. Now, it's well and good if you the creator say it's ok, but the point is that you are given that right as the creator. Without that right, you would quickly be undercut by competitors and have
      • "Free" isn't, if you have to spend a lot of time to get "free" free.

        Time is the most valuable resource a human has. Simply because he cannot multiply it. No matter what you do, after you've done it you have less time (lifetime) left than when you started.

        If you can get something for a handful of greenbacks that you'd have to spend lots of time to get it for "free", most people will prefer the greenback variant. They don't want to spend their time, simply put, if it takes an hour to get something for "free",
        • "Free" isn't, if you have to spend a lot of time to get "free" free.

          This is why I said you can't compete with free on price alone. And the reason I did so is because you said: "The question whether they will buy or copy content can only be answered by its price."

          That piracy tends to be more time consuming than buying is an artificial limitation created so that piracy will be more expensive: it is illegal, and therefore cannot be conducted as openly as legal exchanges. As I said before, since the cost is a
    • I suspect one issue is simply that the BBC don't have GLOBAL rights to programs they broadcast, only UK ones, and therefore have to be seen to be making an effort to restrict viewing to territories in which they are allowed to broadcast. There's also the fact that it can't SELL programs (directly anyway - it can resell via DVD). For UK viewers this service is 'free' because they've already paid. It's easy to break anyway.

  • There are more alternatives... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Burb ( 620144 ) on Monday February 27, 2006 @01:17PM (#14809562)
    Really, what the BBC is saying is that there's two ways you can get its content after it airs on the TV; one is that you can get it through the IMP and have a crippled experience, the other is that you can be a criminal.

    Or use a VHS recorder. Or buy a DVD. Or use a DVD recorder. These all work for me.

  • From TFA: Even if you leave aside all the copyright issues, the outcome of the scenario that's really bad is that it breaks the most important communication tool we've ever devised in order to protect the tiny, unimportant, cushy racketeering business model of the content industry. You know, screw them, if it's a choice between putting everyone in Hollywood out of work - not that this would do that, but if that was in fact the outcome, which the industry says it would be - and if it's a choice between that

  • "Doctorow on DRM and Activism"

    Odd. I just had this image in my head of Christopher Eccleston using a sonic screwdriver on his DVD player. I really need to stop reading Slashdot before my first cup of coffee.

  • Sicky Spot (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ChiefGeneralManager ( 600991 ) on Monday February 27, 2006 @01:38PM (#14809746)
    The BBCs in a bit of a sticky spot with this. The BBCs focus is the UK, and agrees with programme makers to show programme in the UK. Where the content is made available on the web, there are no geographical restrictions, so I understand that programme makers -- and not the BBC -- are the people who mandate that a programme should not be made available outside the UK. I think it's for this reason that IMP includes DRM software.

    When the BBC does own the complete rights, it seems to give it away pretty freely for non-commercial use. Examples include the MP3 of Beethoven that BBC Radio 3 gave away; and the BBCs Creative Archive [bbc.co.uk]

    It is unfortunate that DRM is a part of the BBCs world, but the option would be to not provide content at all. Additionally some of the UK media would whip up a frenzy -- "UK licence payers foot the bill for worldwide quality internet TV". This comes about because of the disconnect between the UK licencing system and the World Wide Web.

    • The BBCs in a bit of a sticky spot with this. The BBCs focus is the UK, and agrees with programme makers to show programme in the UK. Where the content is made available on the web, there are no geographical restrictions, so I understand that programme makers -- and not the BBC -- are the people who mandate that a programme should not be made available outside the UK.

      They could restrict by IP address, as various websites do, or require a correct TV licence number and address combination.

  • Obscurity (Score:4, Interesting)

    by retinaburn ( 218226 ) on Monday February 27, 2006 @01:39PM (#14809758)
    I recently listened to a talk Cory gave. He discussed that the reason he started releasing his books via CreativeCommons was because of the whole Digial-Book fiasco. Where authors were attacking fans of their work who were either hacking the digital version to use in other means, or digitally copying the books.

    He sums up his p.o.v., which I think every artist, be it writer or musician, or Spam carver should listen to before using DRM in their content. His greatest problem as an artist is not piracy, it's obscurity. 99.5% of all the people who never buy his books are doing so because they don't know about his work. The other .5% are people downloading his books, and not paying for them.

    The important step is forming a relationship with your readers, then they are more likely to follow your work, and more likely to purchase your products.

    It might have been Tim O'Reilly who had said the obscurity quote, but regardless of who says it, more people need to hear it.

    • Topic: My Barber, Sal, on Nuclear Proliferation (Score:4, Insightful)

      by RobotRunAmok ( 595286 ) on Monday February 27, 2006 @02:07PM (#14810016)
      ...which is to say that as long as Cory Doctorow keeps buying a round at the quarterly new media circle jerk conferences he'll continue to get headline press-on-demand in the 'blogosphere.' Remember, it doesn't matter whether your 'art' is DRM'd up the yin-yang or a plaintext file, if a non-story with a link to your site doesn't periodically make it to the front page of slashdot, ain't nobody gonna know about it anyhow.

      Marketing sells. Always has. Cory has carefully nurtured a successful 'edgy-cyber-iconoclast' niche, and more power to him, but let's not get all noble and philosophical about it...
      • Of course it matters if has been 'DRM'd up the yin-yang'. A post on boing-boing will get you a link to the material, but it does not guarentee a download or a view. No matter how popular you are, if people find they can't use the content you link too. they are less likely to care next time you link to something.

        Besides some of us actually converse with other people to find out about new artists instead of relying solely on /.
    • >The other .5% are people downloading his books, and not paying for them.

      I think the real problem here, and one I don't think has really been addressed, is that the downloaders are a small number soley because it takes some tech skills to be able to find the book, convert it, and load it on some reader. If someone developed a stupid one-click solution to this then that .5% will be 50%. Then a lot of people will be screwed out of the money. Right now Corey's argument makes sense, but once automation is
    • He sums up his p.o.v., which I think every artist, be it writer or musician, or Spam carver should listen to before using DRM in their content. His greatest problem as an artist is not piracy, it's obscurity. 99.5% of all the people who never buy his books are doing so because they don't know about his work. The other .5% are people downloading his books, and not paying for them.

      This highly applicable to probably the vast majority of "artists". Especially when you consider how highly sucessful authors, mu
    • His greatest problem as an artist is not piracy, it's obscurity...

      Indeed, and perhaps that's because he's not a very successful author. His own creative work may not sell especially well on its own merits. Which may explain why he personally goes to some lengths to get publicity -- any publicity -- by saying provocative things that are sure to get headlines somewhere, or giving speeches and taking stands that try to tap into some kind of broad-based social discontent (like that of people unhappy with the
  • This is a trial. There is no Mac/Linux version so the BBC will never be able to go down this route permanently (since their remit won't allow any license fee payers to be excluded). They're not trialling the player so much as trialling the streaming technology and the viability of delivering the content over the Internet.

    As for whether it's DRMd, well if the DRM locks the content to license fee paying UK residents then I see nothing wrong with that.

    Bob
    • As a non-UK resident, I agree. I just hope they're willing to open it up for non-residents who might be willing to pay for it. I know that's way down on the priority list though.
  • At least the BBC actually make their content downloadable. How many of the worlds other major TV operators/content producers actually make their content avaiable in any form?

    • Well gee, let me see, there must be a few TV content producers releasing their content online in any form.

      Like for example, through the iTunes distribution system, you can get shows from ABC, NBC, and soon CBS, SciFi TV, Comedy Central, Bravo, and other cable channels.
      CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News have news clips available for live streaming. Most Japanese TV networks have online streaming news, they like streaming as a moderate DRM method, rather than downloading.

      A better question to ask is, who DOESN'T put the
    • PBS (the Public Broadcasting System in the US) does have some stuff available, but I do wish they would go a step further like the BBC.
    • Well, the swiss public channels are also doing it (e.g. the french-speaking TSR [www.tsr.ch]) for all the content they own (= their own shows), in real-player & windows media, so it's also working on Linux. They also have comprehensive archives. Of course, they are also funded by a special tax, and they have (IMHO) great content and very, very few advertisement.

      I'd guess that some other public channels are also doing the same, but there aren't that many english-speaking ones ;)
  • You can watch it in the UK by paying your TV license.

    Or you can pay for it some other way.

    The DRM in IMP is aimed at stopping people from outside the UK getting their hands on content funded by UK license payers' money, with out paying anything.
    • And I say once *we* (the fee paying public) have paid for it and watched it - give it away! - why not give it to the rest of the world? I doubt we'd be out of pocket much and the rest of the world would have Red Dwarf. If the UK pumped out quality TV to the rest of the world it might help balance some of our less savoury outputs.
      • And I say once *we* (the fee paying public) have paid for it and watched it - give it away! - why not give it to the rest of the world?

        In a word, economics.

        The BBC is only funded in relatively small part by the licence fee. They also make substantial returns on, among other things, reselling rights to BBC-produced content abroad.

    • The DRM in IMP is aimed at stopping people from outside the UK getting their hands on content funded by UK license payers' money, with out paying anything.

      So how is this better than requiring the connection to come from an IP address in the UK, requiring proof of the user being a licence payer or both?
      Which would work perfectly well with any delivery protocol.
    • Strange - I don't live in the UK, but I can turn on my TV and tune in to the BBC just fine. Sure, it's BBC World, which is *meant* to be viewed by viewers outside of the UK, but technically, it's the same thing - to quote you, "people from outside the UK getting their hands content funded by UK license payers' money, with out [sic] paying anything".

      So, what exactly is the problem?

  • DRM... Such a waste (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WolfZombie ( 918513 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <flowlatrommi>> on Monday February 27, 2006 @02:23PM (#14810175) Homepage
    DRM is such a waste of money and time for everyone. The current business models for CDs and Movies can't be hurting that much, as they can still afford to pay these individual actors/acresses millions for a single film, and make a profit. Maybe they should try the alley of not paying the performers quite so much. Not everyone in the entertainment industry needs to be a millionaire. I hate watching an artist on T.V. bitching about how piracy hurts the industry, then they get in their Bentley or Ferrari with their Rolex and 4 million dollar engagement ring and drive off. Obviously they are hurt by this industry.
    What hurts is the unwillingness of those who have their hands in the honey pot at the top to reinvest in small time artists.
    DRM is just a way for lawyers and a few more executives to get their hands deeper in the honey pot. Imagine how much money has been spent on legal issues that revolve just around this issue, both on the corporate side and consumer side.
    • Investment in small artists (by major labels, anyway) is not nearly what it was. When the musical artist greats of yesteryear were doing their thing, record companies would fund an album or two, then hope to recoup on later albums (when the artist would be hopefully viable). At this point in time, the labels are more concerned about shareholders than making money the old fashioned way (by making products that people want and are willing to buy).

      It is my opinion that most of the larger labels want an album

  • Cory is something of a Hypocrite (Score:4, Interesting)

    by delire ( 809063 ) on Monday February 27, 2006 @02:23PM (#14810182)
    I've seen Cory talk at a few forums/conference and while espousing the virtues of free software and damning DRM he never seems to be able to answer a question from the floor about how he can justify giving money to Apple, a pro DRM company in a ready position to radically monopolise our rights to the music we buy and listen to.

    He will however suggest economic boycott of any other company that does support and invest in restricting the rights of users. He just doesn't seem prepared to see that every time he gets up on stage with his Powerbook and in casual chat, espousing the joys of iTunes, he's contradicting his own ethics.

    Many questions came from the floor and in forums after a talk he gave in Spain [elastico.net] that he was not able to answer to this end. In one forum he claimed that OSX was an open-source OS [elastico.net] and he considers himself a BSD user. IMO Cory can be a bit of a margin fudger at times.
    • You may have just missed when he said it, I have heard him talk negativly on several occasions about iTunes, regarding the DRM, and the diminishing of rights with each subsequent 'update' of iTunes.
    • "Many questions came from the floor and in forums after a talk he gave in Spain that he was not able to answer to this end. In one forum he claimed that OSX was an open-source OS and he considers himself a BSD user. IMO Cory can be a bit of a margin fudger at times."

      I attended, what you say bears no relationship to the talk Cory gave or the questions he was asked.
      Grade A bullplop.


      • Ah, yes he was asked those questions, after the talk and in the thread relating to the festival I posted. Que tal es tu español?

        • He talked about DRM, the broadcast flag, then he was reminded the talk was to be about giving his books away for free and he talked about that. Then the QA session was fanboy stuff, there was very few questions and in some cases he switched to English to explain the legal detail.

          You're asking me to ignore my own first hand knowledge of that talk he gave.

          • "You're asking me to ignore my own first hand knowledge of that talk he gave."

            No I'm not. Howver it's obviously during the "fanboy stuff" that you switched off; a couple of questions did, in fact, request Cory's views on DRM, Apple, open-standards and iTunes.

            Free-software and open-standards were a hot topic for that festival even though it was under the frame of 'Free-culture'. This topic was heated even further by the fact several of these leading free-culture and free-software protagonists were usin
    • I've seen Cory talk at a few forums/conference and while espousing the virtues of free software and damning DRM he never seems to be able to answer a question from the floor about how he can justify giving money to Apple, a pro DRM company in a ready position to radically monopolise our rights to the music we buy and listen to.
      He will however suggest economic boycott of any other company that does support and invest in restricting the rights of users. He just doesn't seem prepared to see that every time he
      • I don't think Apple is pro-DRM though, I think Apple had to, and would do away with it as soon as they could.

        And lest we forget, it was Apple who used the slogan, "Rip. Mix. Burn."
      • I wonder if he knows there's a menu item you can use to 'de-authorize' all the currently-authorized computers (which is 5, not 3) and then you can re-authorize the ones you want.

        • I wonder if he knows there's a menu item you can use to 'de-authorize' all the currently-authorized computers (which is 5, not 3) and then you can re-authorize the ones you want.

          That talk is from June 2004, when apple had just 6 weeks prior changed the limit to 5 machines, I think we can assume Cory was giving an example from before April of that year, in the anecdote he even uses the phrase "I hit the 3 machine limit very early on". Additionally the Apple fanboy blogs are covering this new feature in iTune

    • Maybe because he isn't an all-or-nothing zealot like some of the characters who push free software. A Mac computer places no restrictions on what software you can run on it. Thus, although I fully support free and open source software, I wouldn't have a problem buying a Powerbook and using OS X if the two happened to fit my needs.

      I've seen Cory speak before, but I wasn't at the same conference(s) you were, so maybe you could tell me... was he extolling the virtues of iTunes or iTMS? Remember, iTunes is a mu

  • Easy to say, hard to do. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FishandChips ( 695645 ) on Monday February 27, 2006 @02:26PM (#14810206) Journal
    I think it was brave of Doctorow to say he found Ricky Gervais extremely entertaining. Gervais has been hugely oversold and cannot hold a candle to real comic greats, from Keaton to Sellars, Cook or Cleese. Truth to tell, Gervais really isn't very funny at all.

    Second, Doctorow's views on the BBC and DRM are very oversimplified. The BBC buys in many of its programs, but it buys only the right to broadcast them in its territories not the right to distribute them for free world-wide. Second, the BBC reasonably expects to make money, sometimes a great deal of money, from selling successful programs abroad and in the form of all kinds of subsidiary rights. Clearly that after-market would abruptly cease if open streams were avaliable on the net. With it would cease quite a lot of jobs and the licence fee would probably go up.

    I don't like DRM either, but the BBC isn't the right place to start reforming the West's foobared intellectual property system. On the whole the BBC is a force for good, which I doubt could be said of many US media moguls with their porno factories and shady deals with Chinese state bully boys.
    • The BBC only licences programs to be broadcast within a 7 day window, which is why the DRM is required for the IMP to get off the ground. For programs the BBC produces it is their choice if they want to make them available for longer, but I dare say that few of them are 100% BBC these days - news probably contains clips from other providers, sport broadcasts are probably licenced from the people hosting the event etc.

    • I don't like DRM either, but the BBC isn't the right place to start reforming the West's foobared intellectual property system.

      Hang on a minute. The BBC's mission is, in essence, to provide content to the British public. They can do this, based on a remarkably low licence fee, because they only have to pay for the broadcast rights in Britain for content they buy in, and because for content they produce themselves they can resell the rights for broadcast elsewhere, so that those who benefit elsewhere con

    • I am currently listening to a podcast available through Cory's feed, in which he says that as it stands it is too expensive for the BBC to track down every single rights holder for a particular item. When the item is say an audio file, it can be a legal nightmare, and extremely expensive to do due dilligence. And then if BBC makes a mistake, they can be sued for large sums of money.

      The BBC has said, and I agree with them, that it is not their place to act as an agent of change in copy reform. They can ha
  • We may continue to see the resurgance of "performance art" in the flesh, whether concerts or plays or clubs, as the young, good, inventive artists see their value higher than ever, and sell non-drm'd CDs after the performance.

  • Not being able to tinker (Score:3, Interesting)

    by robolemon ( 575275 ) <nertzy@noSpaM.gmail.com> on Monday February 27, 2006 @06:09PM (#14812119) Homepage
    Cory Doctorow came to Olin College a couple of weeks ago. I wrote up a short summary of his talk [alwaysbeta.com]. The take-home message I personally got from his talk was that the biggest danger comes when DRM creeps into hardware, preventing kids from being able to tinker with technology and learn about it when their minds are most open. Here is the abstract of his talk [olin.edu] which was entitled "0wned -- how Hollywood plans on making the future subservient on the past" .

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