Why CDT's report on DRM falls short of the mark

The Center for Democracy in Technology has released a report on DRM and consumer rights, intended to serve as a guideline for governments who are looking to balance consumer interests with legal protection for DRM, which is technology used to limit how we can use the media we buy on the devices we own.

This is a good goal, but the paper falls far of the mark, by omitting any mention of DRM 'renewability" (the ability of a DRM vendor to take away rights you got when you bought your media or device), open source (which is antithetical to DRM), and Creative Commons (which can't be used in connection with DRM).

I've written an open letter to the CDT staffers listed as contacts on the paper, going into detail on these subjects:

All new DRMs are being designed to be "renewable." The Sony PSP was repeatedly patched to force users to  stop running their own software on their devices. BluRay and HD-DVD are both built around a "renewability" system that can shut down devices. The Broadcast Flag ruling provided for renewability to disable consumers' property on the grounds that if someone, somewhere figured out how to use a DVD burner to circumvent the flag, all innocent users of that burner should be punished to get at the guilty. This week, Microsoft issued its fastest-ever OS patch to remove a DRM crack that users applied in order to make lawful uses of the content they owned.

What kind of disclosure is sufficient here? What constitutes transparency? "This device will do the follow five things and restrict your from the following eight things. However, at any time in the future, without your consent, a secret commercial body with closed membership and meetings may shut down any of this device's features, with no appeal."

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