Alternatives to DRM?

I have argued that the fundamental incompatibility of deployed DRM
systems with open source implementations make DRM-enabling systems
incompatible with W3C standardization.

Mark (and others) have indicated that enabling a DRM API would open the
space for an open source-compatible DRM solution; it might be the case,
but that sounds like sufficiently exploratory to be done outside of
standardization (e.g. in a community group); demonstrating that this
incompatibility (that I believe fundamental) doesn't exist in practice
seem a pretty important prior step to standardization in this space.

If interoperable DRM is not an option, and if we assume that the stance
of premium content (video content [*]?) creators on DRM is not something
that will change in the short term, the question becomes if there is any
middle ground solution that would provide sufficient guarantees to these
content creators while allowing the kind of openness and innovation that
open source offers.

I'm sure this must have been debated to death in other fora — is anyone
in position to summarize what alternative approaches (à la watermarking)
exist, and why they haven't been deemed satisfying for content creators?

Dom

[*] as far as can tell, DRM is gone from music, and people have
published photos on the Web without DRM "for ever"; not mentioning
texts. So maybe we should only focus on the specific needs of premium
video content, which arguably comes with a much higher price tag?

Received on Friday, 12 April 2013 15:03:32 UTC