Cory Doctorow's MS DRM Talk

In his talk Cory Doctorow suggests that DRM not only doesn't work but is also bad for society. He says that any DRM technique can and has been bypassed, therefore the only people who are affected by it are the most technically unsavvy as well as the most honest people. I believe he is correct, but at the same time DRM exists because we live in a capitalistic society. It would be extremely difficult to change something that's based on such a fundamental part of how business works.

As Cory Doctorow states you need not be a techie to circumvent DRM. One only needs the ability to access the Internet and use a search engine to find a crack made by someone who is technically savvy and has posted that information. So the only people who cannot perform this task are those who are "technophobic". There are certain people who are just honest enough to elect not to bypass DRM technology but of course those people would abide whether or not there was any barriers to cross in order to bypass DRM.

What is the alternative? DRM exists because companies are always competing with each other, and at the same time battling the public to ensure that they get payed for their product. If these companies weren't getting money the quality of available products would diminish drastically.

So what needs to happen to change this? It almost seems as though this issue is a proxy for the struggle between the ideals of capitalism and communism. If all the tech companies cooperated with each other there wouldn't be competing media formats that you'd have to make a gamble on which one would take off. One example of this would be blue-ray discs versus HD-DVD. But at the same time if they all cooperated with each other they would essentially have a monopoly and be able to stick the consumer with whatever price and conditions they wanted. This why we have anti-trust laws.

I believe that even though much of this DRM technology is amazingly frustrating, it's the struggle between various companies and consumers/digital pirates that drives the creation of new technology.

the long tail: response

The Long Tail makes some interesting points about the effect that some companies like YouTube and Amazon and the internet in general have on the media industry. In his article Chris Anderson asserts that because books, cds and DVDs no longer have to take up physical shelf space they can be profitable even if they only sell one unit. This may be true for those companies, however I still believe that the artists and production companies cannot be profitable from the fringes of popularity.

It does make the market more dynamic to have more available titles. This means there’s also more competition, but with the more obscure titles now on the market it can be more likely for an artist to find their niche audience and gather a fan base. When you could only get an album from the record store the market was only hit-based, and so only artists whom the popular record labels thought would have a broad appeal would make it to the shelves.

The main flaw I find in this article is that even though the long tail of obscure titles combined might be as profitable as the hits, the only way for an artist to make any legitimate compensation is to strive not be part of the tail.