[Sigia-l] On DRM

[Laurie Gray]

I don't know that this is the strongest argument - it WAS easy to copy
from one format to the other! I remember being thrilled as a teenager
at getting an all-in-one home audio system that contained a turntable
and dual tape deck so I could transfer my albums to tape, or copy
existing tapes...At a company I used to work for, we helped create the
menuing screens for a VHS/DVD dual device that was in development in
the early 00's. Maybe your girlfriend was thinking of copying audio to
video or vice versa?

I think we, as consumers, have been twisting - or at least pushing -
the boundaries of format for years. It was more difficult in the past,
I think, because the content was so strongly tied to the format, and
if you didn't have an all-in-one audio system and instead only had a
turntable, well, this was how you listened to your music that was in
album format. But now, with the advent of mp3's and other digital
formats, the "content IS the format" issues have been disconnected to
some degree.

Honestly, how many of us still refer to a collective musical release
as an "album"? I think that some of us of certain ages have had to
work hard to excise this word from our vocabularies (this would be
me); whereas others of us never even had it in their personal lexicon.
And, I think that this could possibly summarize a bit of the mental
models - and DRM issues - that have come about in recent years.

To me, and I suspect many others, that mp3 file on my computer is just
that. A file. And it's on *my* computer. Because of this, and that
fact that I'm not really seeing or holding it in my hand, per se, like
I would a CD or cassette or album, I *am* disconnected from the fact
that it technically belongs to someone else. The fact that I possess
it, and I really don't have context or supporting details of a
tangible form factor or album jacket or whatever to remind me that it
belongs to someone else and what I own is simply just an instance of
that work, makes the argument that I'd expect to be able to manipulate
it at will easier to swallow.

What do you think?

Laurie (at 8am on Sunday morning, sans coffee)

On 12/3/06, Olly Wright <olly.wright at mediacatalyst.com> wrote:
> 'It's funny that people demand that the content they paid for should
> be playable anywhere. Think about how it used to be: no one would
> ever assume their vinyl record would play in their CD player, or
> their cassette tape would play on their iPod. Or that they could
> stick a VHS tape in their DVD player'. And no one thinks its easy to
> copy from one of these formats to the other either. Why do people
> suddenly think that their content has nothing to do with the format
> any more, and that the thing they buy should be playable on every
> device for all time?'