What Digital Britain would look like if it was based on fact, not special pleading
My latest Guardian column is up -- it's a fantasy alternative to Lord Carter's recommendations for the Internet in the Digital Britain report, one in which the best evidence on building a digital nation is deployed:
If the objective here is to secure Britain's digital future, the most important thing we can do with DRM is avoid it. After all, DRM's most notable effect on the market is to undermine competition by making companies that produce add-ons to popular products liable to lawsuits because they have to break the DRM to do so. Britain today has a booming economy in small firms that refill and resell printer cartridges - interoperating without permission. But the software equivalent - making DRMed music and games play on new hardware, for example - is prohibited by law.Digital Britain report: Why Lord Carter should get realGiving the whip hand to incumbents is no way to safeguard an innovative future.
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Going back as far as 1985, 50% of the money made by a film came from tape sales. A lot of that was for copies bought by rental outfits.
The DRM that killed DAT didn't teach any lessons. Given the grand success of Prohibition which produced a thriving bootleg booze and speakeasy business, you'd think that someone would get it by now.
An old investment adage is "The Trend is your friend." You can't ever make it like it was. But with some imagination you can make reality work for you.
What we have are businesses who know how to milk cows but don't know how to plant new crops.
"they sue dead people."
*facepalm*
"Has Mr Dead turned up? No? Well I hold him in contempt."
Good article. Heck, would people let the post office open their letters, read them and then shut down their post boxes if you're getting too much post.
It annoys me when the internet/tech gets treated differently because it's so misunderstood.
"Heck, would people let the post office open their letters, read them and then shut down their post boxes if you're getting too much post."
Muddled analogy. Privacy is one issue, and of course we should have the right to communicate without surveillance. Uh, wait a minute, anyone capable of using encryption can enjoy privacy. So much for that part of the argument.
As for volume quotas, have you never noticed that the post office charges money for each piece of mail you wish to have delivered? Under what strange principle do you feel entitled to load a privately owned communication network with as much stolen--I mean, shared--data as you choose?
Do you feel equally entitled to go into any restaurant and demand "all you can eat" regardless of what the proprietor has printed on his menus?
sooner or later, Charlie, you have to declare for freedom. An unlimited quality, freedom is. The "stolen" crack is unworthy of you by the way, you should retract it.
The fact is, you grew up and benefited directly, and as a member of a wide open society. I don't think you would be who you are today if you had been forced to follow every greedy, lawyer generated rule.
"giving the whip hand to the incumbents"
marvellous line.
good work Cory.
"And in other news, Cory Doctorow was today convicted of breach of copyright law, when he distributed his works under a so-called "Creative Commons" licence, banned under the Publishers (Compulsory Registration) Act of 2010.
The copyright czar, Lord Carter, said "These so called independent publishers, by refusing to allow publishing companies to collect royalties on their work, undermine the whole creative industry in the country"
Doctorow, a science fiction author and member of the notorious "bOING bOING four" will be sentenced next week."