Cory Doctorow on DRM, Video Technology
It seems a little odd to me to simply file my notes of Cory Doctorow’s talks in the Copyright Law department, but that’s really the best fit for his words, which spanned digital rights management (DRM), new technologies, and the music industry.
One of the reasons I appreciate going to two of his talks is because the Thai food was awesome it helped me realize what I don’t know–that whole "knowing what you don’t know" thing. I learned quite a bit about DRM as it relates to current technologies and the music and video/film industries.
Here are some points:
- DRM is like saying "When you play my record, your record player becomes my property."
- DRM undermines the personal relationship with users because it’s equal to the company saying up front, “We don’t trust you.”
- Interoperability isn’t as important to some designers as control and locking people in.
- Secrecy undermines security.
- An audience member shared with us how he likes to use his local library to borrow materials. “How will DRM effect what libraries can do?” he asked. Cory believes DRM can restrict libraries too much. It’s dangerous because of that.
- Adults only/kid safe search options signal to people they can use a service to find porn.
- Reposting someone’s non-commercial feed on a site with advertisements probably isn’t fair to the content creator. (++)
- Positive user experience can influence people to pay.
- Personal relationships are very important. If people have or perceive that they have a personal relationship with a content creator, they’ll be more invested in the product.
- I think he said his book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom was one of the first ones to be available online. He believes he’s sold more copies by making it available online than it would have if it had just been available in book stores.
I’ll be pondering these thoughts for a while, especially the one about the importance of building personal relationships with content consumers.