DRM's future

The curse of DRM is still alive and well. Both on movies, HDTV and ebooks.

DRM is an encryption put on a work at its source, which only licensed devices can decode. But this is wrong thinking as it alienates the consumer who cannot do what he wants with the works he buys - for example reading an ebook in any software in on any device he owns, or watching a Movie on his media centre, not on his DVD player.

So what to do?

When I buy a digital work, I could ID myself. This ID can be burnt into the work I buy with a personal encryption key. This would allow any device I own to display the work, provided I give it my personal decryption key. What are the implications? When works are sold they must be personally encoded, this virtually blocks DVDs and HDTV from the scheme as there is no way to personalise a DVD in the shop where you buy it (it maybe could be done in an on-line warehouse buying a unique code on to the disk… But is is very viable as a system for on-line downloading.

Take note that each of us would need a personal digital ID, this has to be issued by a trusted body, just like the SSL certificates for web sites today, or maybe you could simply use your bank smartcard? Forward

This is surely the route that on-line retailers could follow if they insist on continuing with DRM, but remember that the music industry has abandoned any DRM on its tracks, and not found any increase in piracy. In fact their sales have gone up as consumers appreciate the utility of their product. However by uniquely IDing every copy sold, any copies found in the wild can be traced to their purchaser...

In the end DRM is probably self destructive as consumers first have to be trusted not to distribute copies of works - at least not to more than friends and relatives. And DRM is a disincentive to buy when used to limit the use of a product to using it on specific licensed devices (like Blueray DVD, HDTV and ebooks), or to use it to limit the time over which you can view the work (e.g. Apple FairPlay DRM on Movies). As I see it the future has two directions:

1 Works that are sold, with either personal DRM or non at all

2 Streamed products that are viewed once per payment.

3 Radio and TV

How about that? May the great debate go on…

and PS: how about a standard format for each media, AAC/FLAC for Audio, MEG4 for video, EPUB for ebooks. Time to all get in line.