Digital Rights Management

John Gruber has an interesting piece about the paradoxical demands of music distributors who want to control access to copyrighted content, while at the same time want DRM'd content to be interoperable between devices.

DRM is inherently non-interoperable- at least, so long as it's controlled by companies like Apple and Microsoft who have incentives to create proprietary forms of DRM for reasons of licensing royalties and marketshare.

DRM and Internet-era copyright law are critical issues that need to be addressed in a thorough and open manner, in which the needs of content distributors and consumers are carefully balanced.

I think the idea of creating an open, standards-based DRM format, which would provide the ability for distributors to create controlled content that could at the same time be interoperable, is interesting. I did a quick search and found Sun's Open Media Commons project, which looks at first glance like an attempt to do just that.

Interesting...

Most die-hard techies are mortally opposed to any form of DRM, but I think it's reasonable for distributors to be allowed to take certain steps to make it difficult for people to steal content. The devil is in the details- balancing "fair use" with copy protection.

I think this balance is achievable, and an open, flexible DRM model would be a good first step toward finding it.