Property in the knowledge society

David Bollier thinks something's gotta give given the overreaching behaviour of some companies in the name of protecting their property. He picks out the Sony CD drm fiasco as an illustrative case.

"we have a case where a major company unleashed malicious software to secretly colonize millions of computers in an attempt to extend the reach of property-rights enforcement...

In its never-ending quest to lock up its music products, Sony BMG had installed an aggressive type of DRM, or digital rights management system, to prevent people from making more than three copies of their CDs on their computers. This particular piece of DRM included a “Trojan horse,” as it’s called in the trade. The code secretly embedded itself on a user’s Windows operating system and sent messages back to Sony servers. Not only could users not detect the virus, most could not uninstall it without professional help.

Sony BMG estimated that the code was present on 49 different music CDs and five million discs, two million of which had been sold. (Watch out if you bought Celine Dion, Neil Diamond or Van Zant. More at the Sony BMG site.)

Once they got wind of the problem, security experts estimated that at least 568,000 computers had been infected by the bad code, and probably many, many more...

So this is where the zealous defense of “property rights” has come: furtive infiltration of your personal computer with harmful code. Is it any wonder that the music industry and copyright law are facing a legitimacy crisis? They seem to think it’s more dangerous for you to make a few copies of your own, legally purchased CD than it is for them to implant rogue software on your computer without your knowledge."

It's worth repeating that: "They seem to think it’s more dangerous for you to make a few copies of your own, legally purchased CD than it is for them to implant rogue software on your computer without your knowledge."

Panic induces reactive and not necessarily sensible behaviour and ever since the advent of the world wide web, Karlheinz Brandenburg's invention of MP3, and Diamond Multimedia's release of the first digital music player, the Rio, the record labels have been in a state of almost constant panic. DRM is one of the primary results of that panic. It represents the illusory quick technical fix to a fundamental shift in the landscape of their business world.

Hopefully within the next ten years or so the shifting tectonic plates of the information and entertainment industries will settle down and gain some level of stability. If drm were to become one of the casualties of the process, then I'm sure the millions of Sony CD buyers, with virus infected computers, will not be lamenting the extinction of that particular digital species.

Ultimately, unusually for me as a pessimist, I reckon that drm will eventually die out because it's such a lousy idea. But it is one of those superfically attractive ideas to some, that we will probably find it getting resurrected periodically to the extent that future generations will have to suffer various infestations, until it can be beaten back to the edge of extinction again in another cycle.