Intel and AOL/TW just issued a Joint Statement of Principles on Digital Rights Management. Perhaps “signed a peace treaty” would be a better description.
The 1,000-word document is intricate, directed more at the inside players in a complex dispute than at the general public. Interpretation is aided by some background.
Twice recently the entertainment and tech industries hacked at each other about DRM in Senate committee hearings. The first occasion (Commerce, Feb. 28) was a cross between pistols-at-dawn and a food fight. By March 14 (Judiciary) decorum reigned, but ill will remains. The focus is a draft bill by Senator Hollings, the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA). It would require industries to agree on a unified copy protection standard to be incorporated into consumer electronic devices. If they fail, the government would step in.
The content industry likes the bill, which was, reputedly, written by Disney. The tech industry loathes it as meddling with design decisions, and fruitless to boot. A unified standard would be vulnerable to cracking, and government involvement would make fixes impossible, to the ruination of all. Techies also see the content providers as control freaks eager to dominate every use of their material and missing the point of the Internet revolution – the massive creativity of millions of human minds working in parallel. Intel VP Leslie Vadasz delivered particularly blunt thoughts about the mentality of the entertainment industry.
Nonetheless, the content providers have a good basic point. They need effective DRM, and so do consumers and the tech industry. Over any time period except the very short term, intellectual property must be protected or it will not be produced. Especially as broadband is deployed, the current river of copying will become a flood. In the end, consumers can have a system that protects Lord of the Rings and delivers it for an $8.00 ticket, or a system that is free, but in which the only fare is the local community access channel. They should want the paid system. So should the tech industry, because no one will buy electronics to watch community access.
Both sides know all this, which leaves one wondering what the fight is really about. Three issues seem dominant.
First, some tech comments could indeed be read as attacking the basic need to protect intellectual property. The Joint Statement says, “Heaven forfend!” All sides love IP. The statement also refutes entertainment industry charges that tech is foot-dragging.
Second, content providers want to “plug the analog hole” by requiring devices on electronic gear to prevent content distributed in analog form from being digitization and redistributed. They also want something to dam the river of copying of existing material. The tech industry at first said, “impossible.” The Joint Statement says: “Maybe,” and, further, maybe there is a role for government regulation. This is a concession by the techies.
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