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DRM (Digital Rights Management) And Cory Doctorow’s Law
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 @ 10:37 am | We Think
DOCTOROW’s LAW:
“Any time someone puts a lock on something you own, against your wishes, and doesn’t give you the key, it’s not being done to your benefit.”
Cory Doctorow, an activist for technology issues, is also a science fiction novelist of renown, and a blogger.
We recently discovered video of a presentation he made earlier this year, during the O’Reilly Tools for Change for Publishing Conference, on the subject of Digital Rights Management or DRM.
We liked what he had to say. In fact, much of what he said with regard to copyright, and the recording industry in particular ,are sentiments we have expressed in the past. We fully support sharing music files.
It’s sort of like buying an article of clothing. Once you’ve made the purchase it belongs to you to do as you wish with it. The same applies to books and recordings of music.
Publishing houses, recording companies and their distributors would have you believe different.
Not only do they want control of the creator of the art form, the author of the work, be it music composer, lyricist or novelist, by wresting ownership of the creation and paying a small amount of the proceeds from the sale of that creation to the originator; they also want to and have begun to have control over the consumer as to how much we pay, how much and how long we have access to the material once we have purchased it. It’s just another example of the world of economic predators. We know a woman who speaks of them as economic terrorists.
Watch the video. It runs about 20 minutes; we believe it is worth your time.
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