Web Extra: The Trouble with Digital Content Controls - ' DRM and Privacy '
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DRM and Privacy
How does the issue of privacy play into this issue?
On the one hand, if you believe you can absolutely control the distribution of content, that is certainly one facet of strengthening my protections of my own personal privacy. If I have a medical file and there is a system of DRM such that I can, with high confidence, ensure it's only my physician who can access that information, that gives me a lot of confidence that my privacy is being protected. So in that sense, it's really good.
On the other hand, it can also make it more difficult to share information; it sort of goes against the idea of widespread information being good, it even goes against the notion in copyright law of fair use. And to that extent, it's bad.
My own sense is that, in some of the proposals that are floating around Congress right now to require either hardware or software installations into PCs and other devices in order to prevent copying, I think those go way, way too far. But that's my own personal perspective.
Furthermore, digital protection is not just an issue about protecting intellectual property or how you can share it. DRM also may have some really big implications in terms of how the PC market is going to develop in the future. If in the future any PC that you buy or any system that you buy has a big lock on it so that you don't have access to the system, I could see that slowing down the rate of innovation and the development of new software applications tremendously.
Why? Because if you can't get access to the software, it's going to be harder for people to actually play around with it to develop new applications. So I think it's important that we think about DRM as not just being an issue about the control of intellectual property, but also—if we have to install locks on pieces of software or hardware in order to protect information from being copied or being distributed—how valuable or how much utility people will get out of their PCs in the way in which we might see innovation in the future.
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