Wednesday 20 March 2013

jail-break, jail-bait

While most conversations about the architecture of Digital Rights Management (DRM, sometimes referred to as Digital Restriction Management) tend to focus the on fact that such platforms are an unwieldy punishment, which does not deter piracy, yields a bunch of play-devices that become quickly incompatible and even stifles creativity.

The happy mutants at Boing Boing share a surprisingly direct confession that this convoluted legislation on media is fundamentally flawed by design. In essence, the whole rationale behind DRM is to give proprietary rights holders leverage over, by analogy, philharmonics, operas, playhouses, the makers of phonographs, video cassette recorders and their more modern avatars, to adhere to the content licensees’ rules or risk facing a quickly creeping obsolesce. The efficacy of the methods do not matter, since the media conglomerates are drafting the laws as they go along and there is the impression of invention openness encroaching.