I think the point is that no technical copy inhibiting scheme will ever "work"; the best ones will only discourage casual users but time and time again we see that such solutions merely penalize most users. Unscrupulous vendors or integrators will assert that "protection" is available to worried rights holders, some of whom even believe that streaming inhibits copying. Although it's possible to have DRM at codec level, it's probably not the best choice for performance and flexibility and complexity reasons (not to mention uselessness as each version is cracked).
What is necessary is a different structure for rewarding rights holders, ideally proportionately if remuneration is to match the existing system closely enough. The BBC is perhaps uniquely positioned to bring about such change. In this connection it's useful to remember that copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret laws, international conventions for these, are constructs which changed the previous systems. [I don't use the terms "intellectual property" - ridiculously vague - or "piracy" - activity off Somalia, not myself when I want to make a backup copy of an out-of-print Disney DVD before my three-year-old scratches it up.] Of course, such a massive change will be quite difficult to implement. It may involve the disappearance of traditional middlemen. But maintaining the current situation I believe is just heading towards something worse where DRM becomes so easily crackable, or so unpalatable to most users and therefore dropped by distributors, that rights holders merely abdicate any control over their works at all. Claiming that any DRM works is really doing rights holders a great disservice I'm afraid. Sean. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
