On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 1:30 PM, cd <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> DRM will completely rule the day, I believe. And here's why: DRM
> will be like your stock proxy statement: it need only be so confusing
> that you relent, and give up on asserting your rights.
I mostly agree, with qualifications:
- In the "Developed" ("First"?) world;
- For the medium term.
Beyond the medium term I really don't believe we can say. DRM will be an
economic drain on first world economies; it's a layer of infrastructure and
process that people won't have to put up with in developing nations.
First-worlders can try to bar entry by developing nations, and that might
work.
A really effective DRM scheme would require top-down control (or at least
visibility) of just about every activity we can engage in that can have
economic consequences. Basically a capitalist version of Big Brother.
Your scenario is maybe a little less than fully effective: Good enough to
confuse us. You may be right. I sort of hope not, because the more extreme
vision is easier to get people riled up about.
OTOH, that "good enough to confuse us" scenario is also good enough for
totalitarian control.
>
>
> My wife just switched her iPod from PC to Mac. She lost half her
> purchased content. Now, you can spend hours and hours, tracking down
> for each purchased recording who controls the DRM, and figure out if
> they have records that you bought it, and then see if they'll let you
> transfer. Or you can relent because you have a life, and take another
> step towards pay-per-use.
>
This is what I meant when I was saying that transferring DRM media
fundamentally requires an infrastructure. You either have an infrastructure,
or you have totally free media. I can see your argument about this being
steps on a path toward pay-per-use; I actually think the revenue might be
greater for pay-to-replace, if the DRM environment stays confusing to the
point of user-hostility.
But you're right, a pay-per-use model of some kind is likely. I reckon the
more likely form it will take initially is as service fees. No smart seller
is going to want to have a blatant pay-per-use system out there, especially
not for leisure items like music or books, because it will inhibit
consumption and breed ill-will. So they'll disguise it.
Kindle can be our guide here: Everything you get on your Kindle is tethered
to Amazon. The device has a fair amount of capacity, but you can easily
imagine people outstripping that. In such a case, Amazon just stores the
stuff for you (or so I understand). By virtue of that, or of the fact that
they have total access to your Kindle at any time, they have total control
over your library -- and they can charge you for access to it. They'll frame
it as "defraying cost" to start with, and I doubt they'll shut off your
ability to get to the content on "your" Kindle [curious: do people actually
"own" their Kindles?], but I'm betting they will in some sense start to
charge for the storage, and sooner rather than later. Probably within the
next two years.
>
> We're moving inexorably towards a model in which the corporations that
> distribute culture will demand from us pay-per-use and pay-per-media
> (e.g., that new right they invented in which they get to control not
> only the content but how you utilize it -- so you can't let an
> algorithm read it).
This is really thought-control, in a sense. It's a more subtle manifestation
of the same ideas that underpin NewSpeak: Controlling the distribution and
redistribution of creative product constrains the mutational functions of
art. If you control how content can be passed around, you can have really
unprecedented levels of control over the ways that people *think*. (Think:
"The Girl Who Was Plugged In." Tiptree was both a psychologist and a former
Spook, after all.)
It's obvious that entrenched interests would want to control the flow and
direction of art; in doing so, they could end up with the societal
equivalent of an AKC-certified purebred, good for show or
narrowly-constrained tasks, and not much of anything else.
Societies that didn't have that kind of constraint would still be free to
adapt in ways that ours wouldn't. So that's why part of me keeps saying
(contra so many SFian authorial voices) that there's hope for the future in
places like Africa, where there's less technological infrastructure for
control.
(Of course, since they'll be going with newer technology right out of the
gate, that window might now last long...)
>
>
> I'm disgusted that many of the writer organizations are on the wrong
> side of this battle. We're as bad as Disney, making use of our
> history and then not only demanding no one make use of us, but
> supporting the choking of the channels as a result. We complain about
> the publishing business and then our organizations line up behind the
> very interests that destroy it.
>
A lot of it seems to me to be driven by no one wanting to give up the idea
that they may one day be best-sellers with million-$$ contracts. As Tom
Tomorrow likes to put it: "I am opposed to taxing the wealthy because I
believe that I may someday become wealthy."
--
eric scoles ([email protected])
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