Cory Doctorow writes great sci fi, co-authors uber blog Boing Boing and has decided opinions on DRM (Digital Rights Management). He was interviewed this week at The Feature and very interesting he is too.
Cory’s position is that DRM is a waste of time. This is partly because copying and sharing is inherent in the design of computers and mobile phones. And partly as someone, somewhere is going to break ranks and launch a handset that encourages it, despite what the rest of the industry has agreed.
If you’re a smart executive, you’re going to jump for the opportunity to sell your customers a better product that does more and costs less.
When this happens, everyone else will be playing catch up, which is how real disruption can occur in a sector.
To this I’d also add the point that if everyone starts to do something, like file sharing, it can’t be illegal for much longer as it’s unenforceable. This will mean it’ll have to be legalised as society can’t have laws which are broken by every one.
It’s only a matter of time before ringtone sharing tips to the next level and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.
Here’s another choice quote from Cory:
Well, locomotives didn’t require horseshoes. You know, the blacksmiths might not have liked the fact that locomotives didn’t require horseshoes. But if you started a business to outfit locomotives with special horseshoes in order to keep the blacksmiths happy, you probably wouldn’t have lasted very long.
Likewise, if you’re starting a business to outfit phones with special locks that make it hard to copy things in order to make the music industry happy, then you’re probably not long for this world.
Yep, can’t argue with that.
—–>Follow us on Twitter too: @russellbuckley and @caaarlo
Recent Comments