Re: Alternatives to DRM?

On 13 Apr 2013, at 02:34, Mark Watson <watsonm@netflix.com> wrote:

> Your question is a good one, though: are there alternatives to DRM that would meet the goals of content providers and also address some of the concerns that have been raised with DRM ? 


There are always alternatives if you can clearly define the "goals of content providers". 
You could envisage some goals to be awareness-based (ie I just want users to know that this content has these restrictions) right up to the "full" enforcement-based (ie: this content shall only be used this way..)
The latter is what OMA DRM does [1] - and the former has been covered in different ways, such as the Privacy-aware Social Web [2] 

W3C has looked at DRM back in 2001 [3] and today, the latest 2013 W3C eBook Workshop [4] mentions DRM as possible areas of work.

I think before we jump to any alternatives, we look at the requirements first.

Cheers...
Renato Iannella
Semantic Identity http://semanticidentity.com
Chair, W3C ODRL Community Group http://www.w3.org/community/odrl/

[1] http://technical.openmobilealliance.org/Technical/release_program/drm_v2_1_2.aspx
[2] http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/socialweb/XGR-socialweb-20101206/
[3] http://www.w3.org/2000/12/drm-ws/
[4] http://www.w3.org/2012/08/electronic-books/Overview.html