Web Extra: The Trouble with Digital Content Controls - ' DRM and Innovation '

DRM and Innovation

So how could these protective measures affect innovation and collaboration?

Think about a book or an article: I want to share it with somebody, and so under fair use I can make a copy of it and share it with somebody, and we can discuss the article and perhaps there is some sort of value that comes out of that collaboration. That takes place all the time.

Now imagine a world where every time I want to make a copy of something, I have to pay the author a dime. Or I have to get permission from the author. You can imagine that world in an electronic environment where there's very strong DRM. Theoretically that shouldn't slow down collaboration, because it just involves another step of getting permission or paying a fee or something like that, but the reality is that it is going to have an impact on collaboration. Less information will be shared, so a lot of the utility of having easy reproducibility gets lost.

We collaborate because it's easy to collaborate, because it's easy to share information. We can get on the phone, we can share e-mails, we can share information physically with a Xerox machine or electronically just by file attachments, and you know if you make it more difficult you're just going to cut down on the amount of collaboration, I don't care what anybody says. My suspicion is that there may be a big social and economic cost associated with that, but one that would be really hard to estimate because it would occur in such diffuse ways in so many different places.

Is there a happy medium? Is there a way to ensure collaboration and innovation while at the same time allowing for a secure environment?

I wish I knew. The stakes are actually very high here. You know, it gets to the heart of a lot of the source of innovation and creativity in our society. This can potentially be an enormous burden, far beyond the sort of direct dollar costs of, let's say, a film or recording or content.

Is there a way? I believe yes, but I have not seen it yet, and I say that because this is the sort of issue which here at Carnegie Mellon we are beginning to look into, not just sort of what is the technical fix, but are there other economic or negotiation protocols that can be developed which, in fact, would ensure that we could still have collaboration among people but not hurt innovation in the PC market and at the same time allow for appropriate protections of digital materials. That's a question that we're starting to do research on here. I haven't seen the answer emerge yet, but I believe that there probably is one. That's what makes this issue so exciting for people at universities.

Private citizens will be much more concerned about their own information?

Absolutely. It's not a perfect example, but look at the rise of identity theft. What is identity theft? It's the ability for someone to take information that you don't want him or her to have, and assemble a picture that represents you so that they have, in effect, stolen your identity.

Do you have a system of rights management so people couldn't do that? You know, that's an example that touches a lot of people because identity theft is a rising crime and one that is very serious.

How can we move in that direction without bearing too much to one extreme? What are some of the things we need to keep in mind?

I think it's important that as we think an issue like about DRM, we recognize, first of all, that it's not just a technical issue. Second? The stakes are very high because they involve issues like innovation and collaboration. What you're really talking about here is as much about social choices as technical ones.