Re: [Moderator Action] Re: European Commission considers mandatory digital rights management

On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 01:14:14PM -0500, Dr Mark R Baker wrote:
> Or indeed give up commerce altogether! Many of the criticisms that apply to
> DRM apply to trade in general - that material goods are fundamentally
> stealable just as digital content if fundamentally copyable - I don't know
> if you have seen the witty parody of Bruce Schneier's anti DRM article that
> is circulating?

Could you send a pointer to Schneier's article to the list?

On the "stealable", I think, there is a fundamental difference.
Stealing normal materialized goods takes away the possession and fruits
of the thing to someone else. 
Copying digital content just produces another instance. It doesn't take
away a piece from another human. The only thing it does is to not obey
to some legal barrier of copying, invented to create a market. So
copying outside the legal framework is just diminuishing the chances for
the estimated benefit and NOT "stealing" at all. Being lawyers in a
legal matter, we should be clear after all and we also should avoid the
war-language of some marketing campaign.

I'm very satisfied, that people on this list are still active. I think
my thinking on DRM (and W3C's thinking on the matter) has not ended. 

Best,
-- 
Rigo Wenning            W3C/INRIA
Policy Analyst          Privacy Activity Lead
mail:rigo@w3.org        2004, Routes des Lucioles
http://www.w3.org/      F-06902 Sophia Antipolis

Received on Friday, 8 March 2002 06:40:54 UTC