[FYI] Technology as Speed Bump
<http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cmusings/2004/02/17#a604>
Technology as Speed Bump
Mary discusses more of the Digital Media Summit, including Professor
Nesson's talk. The closest analogue to his idea in the Digital Media
Project's "five scenarios" is actually the Technology Speed Bump
scenario, one that's now been broken out on its own.
This scenario fascinates me for many reasons (its the motivation
behind last week's post on release windows). One interesting part is
the role of DRM. Unlike in today's digital media market, DRM might
have some use in preventing piracy in the speed bump scenario and the
biz model Professor Nesson describes.
Contrary to the content industries' hopes, DRM does not stop piracy,
nor does it even reduce piracy by itself. Rather, it can only reduce
the initial number of uploaders. Given that one copy can spread
infinitely, DRM has been declared basically useless. Moreover, the
speed bump threat model has been declared dead. The darknet paper
basically confirms as much.
But the darknet paper is also careful to note that DRM's affects
might vary "in the presence of a darknet, which is connected, but in
which factors, such as latency, limited bandwidth or the absence of a
global database limit the speed with which objects propagate through
the darknet." Consider the plan Professor Nesson describes. DRM
becomes more meaningful because, if you can limit the number of
initial uploaders, interdiction becomes much more possible and thus
effective. Interdiction is tough if you have to stop myriad
uploaders. Moreover, by limiting the initial uploaders through DRM
and their propagation speed through interdiction, spoofing can be
more effective, because there are less good copies that need to be
crowded out.
These impediments will not stop everyone. But in the short term, they
might form an adequate speed bump to create that new release window.
Of course, interdiction and spoofing can be defeated. And, as I have
expressed before, I have significant misgivins about this scenario
and am not confident that copyright holders will be able to keep up.
But if they could keep up only for a short period of time, it might
have some benefit. Maybe. If so, then DRM might finally have an
effect on piracy, as it was supposed to, rather than simply
preventing competition, legitimate uses, interoperability, and
innovation. Maybe.
Posted by Derek Slater on 2/17/04; 11:47:47 PM from the General news
dept. #
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: debate-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: debate-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx