SF editor: watermarks hurt artists and reward megacorps

By Cory Doctorow at 7:50 am Saturday, Feb 25

Kathryn Cramer, science fiction editor, writer and investigative blogger, has written a post on how mandatory watermarking proposals like the VEIL initiative will bone individual artists, continuing a trend that started with unfair electronic rights grabs by big publishers in the eighties:

My experience in the early-mid 90s teaches me that part of the purpose of setting the production standards of early CD-ROMs absurdly high was to promote corporate authorship over individual authorship with the idea that digital products could be authored like film and TV, not like books, thus empowering the executive level and disempowering the actual creators, or rather reconfiguring relations such that executives become part of the creative "team."

Now computers are being sold that allow individuals, and small groups of individuals, to produce works to very high production standards on very low budgets. This also threatens the rise of corporate authorship. So watermark-style DRM may do very little to prevent the "piracy" about which the big media corporations are up in arms, it may be the killer app of corporate authorship.

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