Re: Alternatives to DRM?

Dom,

I have not commented on this thread because, frankly, I am not really up-to-date with the technical side to be able to make any proper contribution. Nevertheless, one small remark below:

On Apr 12, 2013, at 17:03 , Dominique Hazael-Massieux <dom@w3.org> wrote:

> 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?
> 

If we really get into the book publishing area (which I hope we will) then the DRM used for eBooks is also not to be forgotten. On the one hand, the various eBook readers can be seen as specialized web browsers, technically; on the other hand, there are already activities adding eBook (more precisely, ePUB) reader extensions to browsers. And DRM is a hot topic in that community...

Ivan




> 
> 


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Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
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Received on Saturday, 13 April 2013 15:12:38 UTC