] Greetings fellow pirates! Arrrrr! I'm here today to talk ] to you about copyright, technology and DRM, I work for ] the Electronic Frontier Foundation on copyright stuff ] (mostly), and I live in London. I'm not a lawyer -- I'm a ] kind of mouthpiece/activist type, though occasionally ] they shave me and stuff me into my Bar Mitzvah suit and ] send me to a standards body or the UN to stir up trouble. ] I spend about three weeks a month on the road doing ] completely weird stuff like going to Microsoft to talk ] about DRM. I lead a double life: I'm also a science ] fiction writer. That means I've got a dog in this fight, ] because I've been dreaming of making my living from ] writing since I was 12 years old. Admittedly, my IP-based ] biz isn't as big as yours, but I guarantee you that it's ] every bit as important to me as yours is to you. Here's ] what I'm here to convince you of: 1. That DRM systems ] don't work 2. That DRM systems are bad for society 3. ] That DRM systems are bad for business 4. That DRM systems ] are bad for artists 5. That DRM is a bad business-move ] for MSFT It's a big brief, this talk. Microsoft has sunk ] a lot of capital into DRM systems, and spent a lot of ] time sending folks like Martha and Brian and Peter around ] to various smoke-filled rooms to make sure that Microsoft ] DRM finds a hospitable home in the future world. ] Companies like Microsoft steer like old Buicks, and this ] issue has a lot of forward momentum that will be hard to ] soak up without driving the engine block back into the ] driver's compartment. At best I think that Microsoft ] might convert some of that momentum on DRM into angular ] momentum, and in so doing, save all our asses. This is a great talk Cory Doctorow gave at MSFT recently regarding all of the arguments we have made over the years regarding DRM. (via boingboing) Why Microsoft should get out of DRM |