The Yale LawMeme is polling readers on “Which is the worst idea?” DRM as of now has “won” 17 percent in the survey. I was hoping it could do “better,” but it’s up against stiff competition such as a national ID card. The numbers:
national ID card–34.20% (145)
software patents–25.94% (110)
DRM–16.98% (72)
time machines–18.40% (78)
biometrics–4.48% (19)
Reminder: We at OpenReader will give publishers DRM if they insist on it–here’s to choice! Let the marketplace sort this out. Don’t worry. It will. The only way for DRM to work is for publishers to be respectful of both fair use and readers’ pocketbooks. And even then, smaller publishers may find they do better without DRM.
DRM cannot respect both fair use and privacy.
If a work is protected by DRM, and the user wants to copy a paragraph (for commentary — clearly fair use)
Either the system allows this, in which case, the system provides no protection because each paragraph can be copied in turn.
Or, the system completely disallows the copying, which denies fair use.
Or, the system has maka request externally to check whether the copy is allowed for this individual, which reveals details about the individuals reading habits.
The system cannot just store locally how much has been copied – since the system could be rolled back and another paragraph copied.
Fair use is a human concept, and is impossible to express in code. DRM requires that all rights be expressed in code. This contradiction can’t be resolved by clever programming.