I don’t much like DRM. It was probably the thing that most troubled me when I bought a Kindle, the paradigm of physical ownership is so strong. Equally, I think the parable that honestly will prevail if suddenly all DRM was dumped is disingenuous at best. I used to work with a software company which made the assumption that people would simply pay for their product. Why not, it wasn’t mass market, and was used by a small niche of professionals, many of whom would have struggled without it? Despite these, they generally didn’t pay. All kinds of excuses, many of them not unfamiliar, but only a depressingly small minority of customers reached into their pockets and handed over the licensing fee. So, the software died, there simply wasn’t enough money coming in for it to remain a viable product. Sensible licensing and pricing alone don’t always work. Once something digital is out there, it’s always out there, on the torrents, USENET, wherever, but it ain’t ever coming home. DRM, of course, isn’t there to flummox l33t h4x0r5 – it’s there to add a layer of inconvenience to the process, and make it a little less easy. I suspect that’s lost on some of the senior management for media and publishing companies.
I don’t know the solution. Certainly sensible licensing and pricing ought to be key. Availability too – the days of restrictive availability are over. End the twisting of copyright into a tool to protect future reselling rights, rather than those of the original author. And perhaps publishers should be seen to play fair, and thereby take the moral high-ground. Horribly restrictive licences, suing twelve-year-olds, the noxious ‘you wouldn’t steal a car’ ads that you can’t fast forward at the front of DVDs. To be quite honest, if that car belonged to any of the people behind that advert, yes I would steal it and torch it.
