Re: DRM in debian?
On Wed, 09 Mar 2005 19:36:39 GMT
Adam Funk <a24061@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I disagree with "good uses". DRM is inherently about removing the
> user's control over his own equipment (computer, DVD player, etc.).
It's not about control of the equipment, it's about control of the medium.
But protection of music and movies is not the only use of DRM technology.
Think groupware.
If I was part of a national or international organization and I wanted to distribute files to employees/members of this organization and allow some read only access, some read/write access, or even limit what parts of this file people with certian keys could read, then DRM is looking like a good solution.
Or say a company wants to put a form on the internet. A job application for example.
A form is created with form elements that can only be changed by people who have a master key with fields for applicants to enter data.
The applicant downloads the file and it gets keyed with a random key so that applicant is the only one outside the company that can read that copy of the form and change the field data they supplied.
When the application is sent back to the company then potentially there could be a another key for the person or people who do preliminary reviews that give them access to fields not seen by the applicant, where they can add comments to applications they pass on to be reviewed by the one(s) making the hiring decisions.
For this usage DRM technology is looking like a pretty good thing to have.
Back to the movie and music thing.
I believe if the the movie companies, record companies, etc... accept that any protection scheme will have a limited life span before it is broken and some amount of piracy will always exist and resist the temptation to always try to gain more control over longer periods of time, then a solution could be achieved.
Instead of the current schemes that uses user specific keys, have generic license tags that indicate how freely the file can be copied and who the copy write holder is. With open methods for every aspect of dealing with the license tags that can be freely used in both commercial and open source applications.
In doing this...
File formats could be extended to include these tags.
Conversion software could be made to preserve the tags during conversion.
Software can be ported to new OSes, architectures, devices, etc... preserving the users right to copy and use the file on any device they own.
P2P software could be made to not share files that have a license tag that indicates it can't be freely shared.
In the case of a movie file software could create clips or stills that carry the license tag.
Things get a little more difficult with editing software, but I think it could be handled as well...
Editing software could be made the will not perform edits on data that carries a restrictive license tag or include that data in another file.
There could be license tags for Creative Commons and other types of licenses as well where editing software would allow for different types of editing or data combining actions depending on recognition of the license and license compatibility.
Later, Seeker
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