On Tech Liberation Front and IPCentral, there seems to be some disagreement as to what kind of control DRM really is. In my opinion, DRM is a new breed of control. It is not a legitimately comparable to a lock because it is significantly more powerful and nuanced. Calling it a mere lock is like calling an Acura TL analogous to a new type of carriage. The closest definition is that it is a "self-enforcing, policy mechanism." It is more comparable to having a lawyer watching over your use of your car to ensure that you are using it in a manner that is deemed acceptable by the manufacturer. Is that mod to the body acceptable? How about that new paint job? Did you check to make sure that you had the right to install a custom-made MP3 player? This is what DRM can subject us to, and it has only been Apple's rabid zeal to keep their brand in tact that hasn't allowed DRM to become a share-cropper system. Make no mistake about it, the content producers do not like Apple, but what can they do? As long as Apple controls the iPod, there is no alternative because no system out there works on the same level as what Apple has control of.

Fortunately, we can rest safely in the knowledge that DRM getting cracked does not cause a wave of copyright infringement. Ironically, most of the illegal rips that have appeared on file sharing networks were leaked by those affiliated with the studios. Perhaps the one flaw that was most widely exposed was not the fundamental weakness of the CSS system, but rather that many DVD manufacturers did not fully implement the DVD restriction specs. My Daewoo DVD player, for example, is not particular about encryption or region codes being present. DRM does little good if parts of the specs are just tossed out by the implementer, and that is a global problem that no amount of federal regulation can solve. It is for this reason alone that a major argument can be made that DRM needs to be a one-vendor monopoly so as to control the entire system. Perhaps you have to be a software developer to see openness as a gaping hole here, but it seems like a technical pipedream to have an "open standard DRM." Interoperability and security are invariably at odds with one another when it comes to DRM.

The only way to allow buyers to preserve the value of their data at that point is to let them break DRM systems for what can be reasonably called fair use reasons. Why James DeLong and others are so squeemish about using law enforcement for real, not for profit infringement is beyond me. It would seem to be the best balance between protecting copyright holders and their customers since the final determinations would be made by humans, through legal standards. If non-fair use copyright infringement is theft, then clearly there is a good reason to make use of the government's law enforcement capabilities. In practice, the best protection of copyrights will end up being the threat of loss of life, liberty and property, not reasonably easy to hack content restriction systems.

On a side note, what I would like to know from the IPCentral guys is, at at what point do we just give up on DRM ever working? At what point do we say, "the market will not accept this." All of the DRM schemes that have been proposed by vendors with the ability to get them out to the public in force, except for Apple's FairPlay, smack of a vaguely Orwellian tone for the average buyer. While the features would be beneficial for businesses, they wouldn't be for me or any other average buyer. Please, spare me the idealistic "the market will find away" rhetoric. I am more of a cynic than a libertarian and what I see promises a future dominated by certain DRM schemes that are not... shall we say... liberal in their treatment of the buyer's use. So, at what point do you admit that you were wrong if the market fails to create any real DRM schemes that provide a variety of choice rather than a share-cropper relationship between copyright holder and copyright good buyer?