/Big Question/ Rights and wrongs

01/04/2008 | Filed under Discover > Big Question

Jon Lech Johansen, also known as ‘DVD Jon’, has released a new app called doubleTwist desktop, enabling DRM-ed video and music to be shared across multiple devices. So is this the death knell for digital rights management?

Media & PR expert
Tim Gibbon
Elemental Communications

In an ideal world, artists, publishers and technology providers would be working together in  harmony and more compatibility would exist. But that’s not the case, is it? We cannot condone piracy, but what Jon Lech Johansen has done here is impressive – just not so impressive for artists and publishers, it seems. I would be very surprised if the aforementioned did not challenge this.

Culturally, I believe that we still experience the attitude ‘It’s the web, so it should be free’. With consumers complaining about wrestling with the problematic nature of sharing content on their ‘own’ systems and the inflexibility of doing so, it’s easy to see how doubleTwist could be a solution for them. Although the software creators state that it should not be used for illegal purposes, it will always depend upon the user. It’s a personal choice (bearing in mind no-one likes being locked into anything), so it’s down to the individual whether they play fair and use content within the framework of the law. With the social networking capability of the software, many users could distance themselves with great ease, or share illegally, not fully understanding the repercussions of what they are doing (even if there are sufficient warnings).

It’s obvious to see that attitudes and legally managing digital right management (DRM) need reviewing, and quickly. Is it the beginning or the end of DRM? Only time and the conversations between the above will tell. The law may not be enough to enforce the policing and prosecution of infringement now (because we all know how difficult it is and how long it takes to make anything stick), but it will need to. Although artists, publishers and technology providers appear to find it too painful to work together, they’re going to have to just get on with it in order to allow content creators and owners to be compensated fairly.

Tim is the founder and director of Elemental Communications, a media comms consultancy.

Social media and comms expert
Rachel Hawkes
Elemental Communications

Of course artists and their labels deserve their dues for their work, but (unfortunately) I think it premature to say the least to start predicting the demise of DRM. I’m of the mindset that if I purchase an album then it’s mine: those 12 songs are mine to do with what I wish (for my own personal use). If I want to enjoy the artist’s music on the hellish journey into work on my phone, iPod or PSP, surely that is my right? If DRM is taken literally, then I am prohibited from copying or converting my CD. I’ve yet to try doubleTwist (although it only launched mid-February), but I almost certainly will.

Digital media is a minefield, and I am terribly glad that it doesn’t fall on my shoulders to try and police it, nor to come up with a solution that makes artists, labels, publishers and consumers happy.  

Rachel Hawkes is an account director at media comms consultancy Elemental.

Activist
Oxblood Ruffin Hactivismo
www.hacktivismo.com

Double Twist desktop is a long overdue convenience for consumers, and hopefully something that the industry will try to learn from.

Oxblood Ruffin is the founder of Hacktivismo.

Application manager
Gavin Dandridge
Fortune Cookie

I don’t think doubleTwist marks the end of DRM, because to my mind DRM never really took off. Those in the know tend to avoid using any DRM-encoded media and there is already a plethora of software freely available on the web that strips away most types of DRM. Countless individuals are already circumventing DRM on a daily basis. It’s true that doubleTwist might make DRM-stripping easier and more accessible to the masses, but to me it’s simply another nail in the coffin of the much-hated DRM formats.

Gavin Dandridge is IT & application services manager at Fortune Cookie, a UK-based web design agency.

Project manager
Ané-Mari Peter
on-IDLE

Copyright should be protected and the recent success of the Hollywood writers in obtaining a larger slice of online revenue is laudable. But the view of the Free Software Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation and others that DRM is being used anti-competitively when content is sold online rings too true to be ignored.

DRM should be applied to copies and resale, as is commonly understood by the ‘first-sale doctrine’, and not to play and storage devices or formats. The days of digital rights ‘management’ (‘restriction’ is probably more apt) to control or limit the devices, platforms and software of paid-for content are very numbered – both on and offline.

Digital content use and storage is not quite the same thing as the format wars between VHS and Betamax, cassette tape and CD and, more recently, HD DVD and Blu-ray. Sony lost Betamax but won Blu-ray – conspiracy theories anyone?

Selling content that can only be used in iTunes or Windows Media Player, or a device that only works with one provider (cue the iPhone), is not only outdated and anti-competitive, it’s also mean spirited. Bring it on, DVD Jon!

The industry must find a fairer way to handle online distribution, from which DRM will have its natural and essential place.

Ané-Mari is the co-founder of on-IDLE and has a background in business management and technology.

Content specialist
Stuart Dean
Cognifide

As a child I remember spending hours trying to get a version of Manic Miner to load on the good old ZX Spectrum 48K. I would sit eagerly waiting with my hands over my ears staring at the screen that said “cracked by pie-eater”.

With this in mind, I do not think DVD Jon’s latest application spells the end for DRM. I’m sure someone back in 1980s was saying the same about pie-eater and his control over the cassette loaded games market, but here we are a quarter of a century later with DRM alive and well. The goals will shift, pie-eater and DVD Jon will hit the post, then the goals will move again.

Stuart Dean is the CO at Cognifide, a content management service that helps its clients realise the value of the existing content.

Ecommerce specialist
Chris Barling
Actinic

I guess that the outcome may depend on how much Jon looks forward to a spell in prison. Having dodged that particular bullet back in 2002 in Norway, you’d think that he’d know better than to move to the US. A second question is whether, like the backers of Napster, Index Ventures will get sued for their investment in doubleTwist.

The whole thing is likely to end in a feeding frenzy for the lawyers. What’s frustrating is that the creative industries continue to fail to come up with a cheap, ubiquitous and simple standard that’s actually usable. Until they do, people will carry on trying to defeat copy protection, and many of us will sympathise with them.

Chris founded the well-known ecommerce software development company Actinic in 1996.

Software expert
Ian Moulster
Microsoft

I hate having to lock my car when I leave it. In fact, it would be good if it didn’t need keys at all and I could just jump in and press a button to start it up and never worry about locks again. The problem with this is that it probably wouldn’t take long before someone stole it, which means that I have to put up with the irritating inconvenience of locking my car and having an ignition key. And if I lose the key or lock it inside then it’s even worse: even though it’s my car and I paid for it using my money, I can’t use it. What kind of madness is that?

Well, actually, it isn’t madness at all. It’s just the world we live in. If you don’t lock things people will steal them. And if you lose your keys you’re going to have some inconvenience. However, people seem to think that music and videos and software are different. That in fact we shouldn’t need to “lock them” at all because, perhaps, they should just be free. Or if I buy these things I should be free to use them wherever I want to and not have to worry about keys and locking or anything else, even if that convenience leads to large-scale piracy.

Well frankly that’s a load of nonsense – why should these things be free? And why should I be able to have the convenience of using them wherever I want to, if it means that they are much more likely to be stolen and abused – just so I have a little more convenience. The bottom line is that if digital assets aren’t locked in some way, people will steal them. Which means opponents of DRM must either think everything should just be free (and are prepared to suffer the consequences) or they believe that there’s some better way that still compensates the people who deserve compensation but doesn’t require some kind of lock-and-key approach. I’ve yet to see this better way, or anything other than DRM, that actually works. And by ‘works’ I mean that ensures that the relevant people are compensated for their work, and there isn’t wholesale robbery of digital assets by every man and his dog. Perhaps I’m wrong, and perhaps there is such a system. If so it’s keeping a pretty low profile.

So my answer to the question is ‘I hope not’. Because if it does mean the end for DRM, and we don’t actually have a better way to replace it that prevents people from just stealing someone else’s hard work and talent, we’ll all be poorer as a result.

Ian Moulster is senior product manager in Microsoft’s Developer & Platform division in the UK.