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Lessig Blog by Lawrence Lessig is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Comments (5)
Getting Microsoft's support in the DRM battle, or trying, seems laudable, desirable, and perhaps even possible. But I'm not sure it's the advisable route; I don't think trusting Microsoft is ever an option, and I don't think any attempt at alliance with them is wise. The problem with having an 800-pound gorilla in your corner is that the closer it gets, the easier it is for the gorilla to take your head off.
Cory's speech was dead-on, and might even appeal to some of the Microsoft folks -- in a world of ideas. But in the real world, Microsoft and Time-Warner together own ContentGuard, which is a major player in DRM standards (XrML). For a dominant content owner and a monopoly infrastructure player to jointly control a major DRM standard is a textbook example of the multilevel "strategic" positioning that Larry writes about in Future of Ideas. anyone who has read that book will not be sanguine about Microsoft's future role in locking in DRM, Cory's eloquence notwithstanding.
"Build it and they will come".....this sounds like it should have been a call to the F/OSS group, not MS. As my experience with F/OSS, they will build it if they find it necessary.
This is off topic, but there's a good reason for it.
Since we're talking about copying and copyright and digital rights and money, why are so few people at the major news outlets in the United States talking about this? You would think that someone would pick up on Doctorow's emphasis on the "least sophisticated" and realize that this kind of activity affects the poor disproportionately.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/3805581.stm
I only read this a few days ago, but I think that Cory hit the DRM issue dead on the head. It amazes me that companies like Disney, Microsoft and Adobe are spending so much money on DRM. I have never found a DRM that have done anything but digitally managed my rights away.