{"id":3683,"date":"2006-08-17T01:27:03","date_gmt":"2006-08-17T05:27:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/2006\/08\/17\/bring-on-the-prm-wars\/"},"modified":"2006-08-17T01:27:03","modified_gmt":"2006-08-17T05:27:03","slug":"bring-on-the-prm-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/2006\/08\/17\/bring-on-the-prm-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"Bring On the PRM Wars"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Felten’s put together a fine series<\/a> on evolving defenses of DRM and related anti-circumvention laws. He’s right that the entertainment industry has begun more frequently offering<\/a> alternative arguments to defend the DMCA+DRM, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they are “replacing” the DRM as speed bump to “Internet piracy” myth.  Yet if this were the case, I would welcome the switch. Indeed, if the DMCA’s existence hinged on these issues, I bet it would be wholly reformed<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Hollywood certainly can’t sell the public on these arguments, as Felten also suggests. They can’t convince consumers that restricting compatible devices is a good thing — heck, the record labels won’t even defend the iPod-iTunes tie, though they reluctantly go along with it.  And if the major entertainment companies’ best argument <\/a>for price discrimination is that they’ll get to take away your ability to freely burn CD copies of purchased music, then they’ll be doing my job<\/a> for me. Consumers don’t want fair use taken away so that it can be sold back to them bit by bit.<\/p>\n

This isn’t to say no one can make a coherent argument defending these practices.  Rather, I think consumers are generally — and rightly — suspicious of them. Policymakers and judges might be similarly wary — remember, even as many legislators ignored the DMCA’s broad harms<\/a>, the issue of music player incompatibility got a hearing<\/a> relatively soon after its effects began to be felt. But, at present, the fear of “Internet piracy” blinds many of them to DMCA+DRM’s actual impact.<\/p>\n

So I say: bring on the Property Rights Management wars and a fair evaluation of the DMCA+DRM’s impact.  Of course, because they don’t want such an honest look at the DMCA, the RIAA and MPAA will continue to focus on the DRM-as-speed-bump myth, and too many policymakers will continue to buy it.  But, hopefully, with enough convincing, the latter will one day change their tune.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Felten’s put together a fine series on evolving defenses of DRM and related anti-circumvention laws. He’s right that the entertainment industry has begun more frequently offering alternative arguments to defend the DMCA+DRM, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they are “replacing” the DRM as speed bump to “Internet piracy” myth.  Yet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}