Yeah, yeah, we know how technical that title sounds. Certainly not a big grabber of a headline. But it was written by Brits, you know. And it’s info we here at beautiful downtown TVWriter™ think everybody who creates and then releases his/her brainchildren into the interweb stream should know:
by Cory Doctorow
I’ve been writing about “digital rights management” (DRM) for years in this column, but here I am, about to write about it again. That’s because DRM – sometimes called “copy protection software” or “digital restrictions management” – is one of the most salient, and least understood, facts about technology in the contemporary world.
When you get into a discussion about DRM, you often find yourself arguing about whether and when copying and sharing should be allowed. Forget that for now. It’s beside the point, for reasons that will shortly be clear. Instead, let’s talk about the cold, hard legal, technical, marketplace and normative realities of DRM. Let’s talk about what happens with DRM in the real world.