That doesn't work if you can't get content providers in the door.
My attitude towards DRM changed somewhat when I saw what happened with the online music stores. DRM was absolutely required for Apple to get major labels to the table. Then, over time, DRM was chipped away, to the point where the iTunes Music Store is DRM-free, Amazon's MP3 store is DRM-free, etc.
If we can skip the DRM phase entirely, sure, I'd be on board. But is that realistic?
But is the Apple-DRM thing repeatable? The circumstances there were: 1) Apple had a majority market share on portable music players. 2) The only DRM that worked on those players was Apple DRM. And the other way around -- Apple DRM was not available on any other players. This led into a lock on the market, where the music industry had to play by Apple's rules. So to break out of that, the only option was to go DRM-free (so they could sell music through Amazon, etc).
In the case of other content, for the most part it is either streaming only (most of the movie content, Netflix etc), or there are multiple players in the device market -- Amazon, B&N, Sony, etc. for ebooks.
I would hope that DRM goes away for all other media, but I don't see the other industry players giving in anytime soon.
I view DRM as a toy or trinket that has been used to get content providers to agree to digital distribution. It would kind of be like securing your house by placing a sign on the front door saying, "sorry this door is locked"
I think the real intention here is MS, Netflix, etc, wanting to distribute & sell video to iOS users without paying Apple a cut, and they need DRM outside of apps.
Content providers will be forced through the door by competition from copyleft and creative commons content.
Competition is the easiest way to combat DRM.
The presence of DRM legitimizes a social norms of restriction. The lack thereof legitimizes social norms of sharing.
DRM is a tangible embodiment of the the tragedy of the commons. DRM is analogous to a series of electric fences partitioning off the commons so that only some cows from some individuals can graze in certain places, but no other cows can graze there. People will invent electric fences for use in chipping away at the commons, but it would be a disaster for society to standardize the electric fences so that anyone can chip away at the commons effortlessly.
I'm of the opinion that if some entity wants to cripple their content with DRM, that is their prerogative, but they shouldn't get help from W3C and other bodies creating open standards.
On top of all that, as a developer, DRM is one more layer of bullish*t to deal with. I'm perfectly happy paying for APIs based on usage. I connect, you measure, you charge. Last thing I want to encounter are APIs which require me to implement a cumbersome layer of DRM to use content.
Lastly, I can only see the presence of DRM reducing accessibility of content for special needs users, such as the blind, because any form of DRM is likely to reduce how you can manipulate content. What if the DRM prevents close-captioning? text-to-speech? Addition of semantic data? etc.
DRM is wrong. It doesn't not produce a better environment for the consumer because it reduces competition.
DRM introduces friction. Friction reduces "liquidity". Lower liquidity results in a smaller market with fewer options.
REST vs SOAP is a perfect example of unnecessary friction in a "technological market". A market with DRM would have the same impact on innovation as a SOAP-based market.
> DRM is wrong. It doesn't not produce a better environment for the consumer because it reduces competition.
The fundamental flaw in your argument is that you assume we would still have the same content available to consume without DRM.
However, the whole reason to allow copyright in the first place is to create an economic incentive for those who can to create and share works. And the whole point of DRM is that people weren't honouring copyrights, so the incentive wasn't working. Clearly there is not sufficient incentive for the major content producers to share their movies via on-line systems without DRM right now, because they have almost unanimously refused to work with such systems, and no-one has been able to force them to do so through commercial pressure.
> A market with DRM would have the same impact on innovation as a SOAP-based market.
The market already has DRM, and there are more (legal) ways to get access to the latest video content today than at any time in human history. But right now, implementing adequate DRM takes more effort than it should, and that has an impact on innovation by at best reducing the efficiency of services working with DRM'd content and at worst rendering services that would otherwise have been successful and beneficial to consumers commercially unviable.
> Content providers will be forced through the door by competition from copyleft and creative commons content.
If this were true, surely we would already see copyleft and creative commons content replacing TV programs and movies, since we've been in the DRM world for so long already. Yet we don't see those things. Why?
* People who really really care and don't mind spending the money have cable or go to the movies or buy Bluray disks
* Many others use Netflix, Amazon and iTunes, which all use DRM for their video content
* For other cases not covered, people either bootleg or just wait till the disc comes out
Free content wonks have been making this same argument for years, and it has yet to come true, so I fail to see why you'd expect it now.
My attitude towards DRM changed somewhat when I saw what happened with the online music stores. DRM was absolutely required for Apple to get major labels to the table. Then, over time, DRM was chipped away, to the point where the iTunes Music Store is DRM-free, Amazon's MP3 store is DRM-free, etc.
If we can skip the DRM phase entirely, sure, I'd be on board. But is that realistic?