I watched Creative Commons champion Prof. Larry Lessig‘s fantastic presentation to the TED Conference earlier today in awe.
How can you take a subject as potentially mind-numbing as copyright law and turn it into a standing-ovation inducing call-to-arms?
Watch the master in action to see:
I have written about DRM many times previously and what an evil, anti-consumer, scum-sucking device it is. Many of the comments on these posts disagreed with my position.
I really began to doubt my thinking on DRM though when Bill Gates, speaking about DRM seemed to agree with me!:
People should just buy a cd and rip it
However, overnight Steve Jobs has come out with an open letter pleading for music companies to let him sell DRM-free music!
the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.
Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries. Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free. For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard. The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company. EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company. Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.
Wow!
Here is the largest seller of music online telling his customers (us) to hassle his suppliers (the music companies) into allowing him to sell DRM-free music. Brilliant!
Maybe there’s hope for a DRM-free world after all.
For more, see the biggest discussion on techmeme I think I have ever seen.
There is a fascinating interview with muslix64 today on the Slyck.com site.
muslix64 is the guy who cracked HD DVD DRM when he released the open source application BackupHDDDVD just before Christmas. HD DVD is one of a pair of new formats of High Definition DVDs (the other format is called Blu-ray).
muslix64’s application will allow people to bypass the DRM on DVDs and access the HD DVD’s movie content directly.
As the proud possessor of several DVDs which were bought in the US and won’t play on my DVD player in Ireland because of the regionalisation built into DVDs, I’m delighted this has happened.
The sooner the movie studios realise that all the money they are pouring into DRM is wasted because 1) they are annoying their customers and 2) people will find a way around it anyway, the better.
As muslix64 said:
The reaction time of the community will be way faster than the reaction time of the industry.