Re: Cory Doctorow: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards, says it's OK for your browser to say "I can't let you do that, Dave" [via Restricted Media Community Group]

On 2013-10-08 17:29 Alastair Campbell wrote:
> Emmanuel Revah wrote:
> I do take your point that we should know better and protect users in this
> step of the war on general purpose computing. However, the majority of
> users want the content big-media provides, and don't care enough about the
> DRM issue to avoid it. In this way market forces are pro-DRM and there is
> no alternative that meets the user needs (get the content) and media
> requirement (protect the content). Yet.

Users don't care? Sure, right up untill the point that it bites them in the 
ass, as it inevitably always does sooner or later.

At which point they tend to get really mad, you can only screw people over so 
many times before they stop taking it.

There are at least 2 readily available alternatives:
- Piracy for mainstream and supposedly locked up by DRM content 
- Free culture for (currently) non-mainstream content

> Perhaps it is unhealthy, but it's practical and necessary. I'm not saying
> anyone owes the industry a solution, but if we don't want DRM as the
> solution there has to be an alternative. Currently there isn't one.

The alternative is not engaging in an arms race trying to introduce artificial 
scarcity, i.e. DRM
Instead embrace the non-scarce nature of digital goods and build your business 
model around that reality

Competing based on controlling a non-scarce good is bound to end in disaster 
sooner or later.
It's like a cartooncaracter holding a big lead weight above their head. They 
can keep it up for a while but sooner or later they're gonna get crushed. You 
just can't do that indefinately, furthermore when they finally do get crushed 
everyone will laugh and shake their head at the stupidity involved.

That necessitates stepping away from the status quo of course, which in turn 
requires some actual vision and leadership. 
I'm seeing very little signs of either in the traditional content middlemen, 
there's the occasional exception like Baen Books, but most of the traditional 
middlemen obviously just don't get the digital world even slightly, 

There's a new trinity around:
1) the general purpose computer, i.e. the multi-purpose factory for digital 
goods
2) the internet, i.e. the global and general purpose distribution network for 
digital goods
3) the increasing availability of production software (often free) and 
peripherals like scanners, microphones, cameras, and digitisers (cheaper and 
better with every passing year)

1+2+3 means the barriers to entry have been lowered by several orders of 
magnitude already (and they aren't done lowering yet) 

The amount of competition is increasing accordingly and much of it is 
available freely or at much lower price

e.g. the nigerian film industry is producing professional movies for 17k-23k 
dollars/movie now, compare that to the traditional multimillion dollar 
hollywood productions (they're producing more movies then Hollywood to)


CGI and animations that cost millions just a decade or so ago can be done by 
one indivual on their home computer today, 

We're already halfway into the age where things only become hits by going 
viral, and that will spell the end of the traditional content producers' lock 
on the definition of mainstream.

[1] 
[2] 
[3] e.g. the nigerian film industry is producing professional movies for 
17k-23k dollars/movie now, compare that to the traditional multimillion dollar 
hollywood productions (they're already producing more movies then Hollywood 
also)
-- 
Cheers

Received on Tuesday, 8 October 2013 19:59:03 UTC