On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 12:33, Chris Warren <[email protected]> wrote: > Someone isn't going to finance content for you if you can't promise you'll > do your utmost, through agreements with 3rd parties (e.g. broadcasters) and > all the technical and legal measures available to you, to protect their > investment, however futile that may be. > > That isn't crazy - if you were investing in a risky venture, you'd still > want promises that those you were investing in would try to minimise risks.
No, it _is_ crazy. What isn’t crazy is saying “look, it’s free to air. it’s available to virtually everybody in the UK, and that’s the purpose of the broadcast. that’s why we’re commissioning it.” Similarly, dispelling the myths that the technical measures do _anything_ except harm legitimate users would be a good start. Those wishing to misappropriate the investment are not those who are in any way affected by the DRM. Seriously. I don’t know of any other way to explain this. _All_ DRM does is harm the relationship with your customer. That’s it. It’s not “doing your utmost” at anything if you know already it’s futile. That’s just called wasting everybody’s time and money, including the people who ultimately pay for the output in the first place. > However, don't get me wrong - it would be nice if there were more > flexibility regarding the portability of protected content, but instead of > many very smart people expending huge amounts of effort demonising DRM, > maybe it would be better spent constructively, on finding a solution that > will help protect investments and be "Free" software friendly? The solution is not to attempt to implement a system which only achieves the opposite of the intended effect. DRM and anything “open” cannot by definition mix in any useful fashion: DRM relies solely on things being kept secret, which is pretty much the opposite of anything which is actually open ;) The solution is the one which has served free-to-air broadcasting very well for many decades: you accept the realities, or you don’t play ball. It really, honestly, truly, isn’t any more complicated than that provided you’re actually in possession of the facts (and I realise many of the people engaging in negotiations actually aren’t). M. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
