Today is a good day to learn about Digital Rights Management, or more accurately Digital Restrictions Management:
- Selection of blog posts from Day Against DRM 2011
- Posts on the Creative Commons blog about DRM, going back to 2004.
- DRM article on English Wikipedia
Although DRM seems to no longer be the red hot issue it was a decade ago, it is still very much present, causing problems regarding fair use, lack of competition, privacy and security breaches, forced obsolescence, and more. DRM is often now involved in distribution of movies and books, to the great consternation of some librarians. Not listening to librarians puts our freedom and safety at risk.
A few things about DRM specific to Creative Commons:
- CC licenses do not allow licensees to use DRM to prevent other licensees from taking advantage of the freedoms the licensor granted. Sounds good, but a license isn’t necessarily the place to put everything good — and the wisdom of this condition has been hotly debated in in years past. We decided not to change it in version 3.0. With discussion of version 4.0 upcoming, should we think about refining the language?
- Read our FAQs regarding DRM and CC.
- DRM puts CC’s values in stark relief. DRM attempts to use technology to make it harder to share and collaborate; we want to use technology to maximize sharing and collaboration. DRM is anti-social, CC is pro-social.
- In the long term, DRM will lose if collaboration and sharing win. This will take decades, or perhaps not so long if you get involved in open culture, education, government, science and our older cousins in the free software movement (who have spearheaded this Day Against DRM).
One thing I can say for sure about the next 4.0 version of CC licenses is that the anti-TPM requirement should stay, or at the very least give us authors the anti-TPM (or anti-DRM) option. There is no point to CC licenses if they are not meant to be shared (at least non-commercially). DRM contradicts CC philosophy in this very important aspect. Refine the language, but do not take the anti-TPM (anti-DRM) dispositions away.
I like the no-DRM restriction in CC, but I see one problem with it: There are almost no DVDs without DRM. Sure, it is possible to make, but I’ve only heard of that happening once, and it’s very unlikely that some big film company is going to make a DRM-free DVD (or Bluray for that matter). So if someone wants to use some CC licensed work in a movie, or as an extra, on a DVD they will not be able to.
I’m not saying this means the restriction should go. It’s just something to consider.
I like the no-DRM restriction in CC, but I see one problem with it: There are almost no DVDs without DRM. Sure, it is possible to make, but I’ve only heard of that happening once, and it’s very unlikely that some big film company is going to make a DRM-free DVD (or Bluray for that matter). So if someone wants to use some CC licensed work in a movie, or as an extra, on a DVD they will not be able to.
I’m not saying this means the restriction should go. It’s just something to consider.
Doesn’t DRM include stuff like not removing embedded attribution and license data from digital files etc? For example I always include contact details and preferred attribution in the EXIF of my images. Many others do the same as a way of mitigating the problems of the license getting lost as the work gets copied.
Pedro, thanks for the comment; agree refinement is the way to go.
Forteller, yes that’s one of the dilemmas. Possibly could be partially addressed with refinement, but in the end, if distribtuor completely tied to DRM (eg not even parallel distribution, which was a refinement previously dicussed) they can always ask for separate permission from the copyright holder(s). Price they pay for using DRM.
Overton, no. Metadata (EXIF is an example) can contain information about copyright, license, and provenance, but it doesn’t have a “technical measure” that attempts to use your computer to prevent you from using the file the metadata is embedded in or accompanies. There is a tangential relationship in the US DMCA prohibits technical circumvention of DRM, but also prohibits removing copyright notices which aren’t associated with DRM.
There’s a Japanese translation of this post at http://peer2peer.blog79.fc2.com/blog-entry-1790.html with correct license notice and attribution. Thanks!
I do find it ironic that on this Day against DRM, I lost my e-licenser Dongle to use my legitimate version of Cubase 6.5 in my music production studio, and was left with no option but to turn around and drive back home as the studio was unusable without it. Unfortunately e-licenser has no temporary internet verification for such an occasion which I can assure you is not rare.
In the music production industry there is rampant piracy of software, and plenty of dollars being made with cracked plugins so I understand the need to try and curtail this. But when over the top software protection actually stops me being able to do my job, it really does more harm than good.
yay success thanx 2 defective by design 4 freeing our sytems and devices