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This commentary in Jonathan Schwartz's talk comes from my notes taken in Aspen last week; I didn't have time to type it up then.
Aside: Jonathan Schwartz has a very tidy ponytail. Many men with long hair do not know how to take care of it properly, but he does very well.
J.S. opened up with a question--what would happen if bandwidth were readily available, cheap, ubiquitous? And an answer popped into my head--devices would tend to converge--all devices would, like cell phones, evolve in the direction of doing everything. That was what he had in mind, too, and he continued, with the thought that devices would not all be the same--they would continue to distiguish themselves by level of portability, size, that sort of thing, but less and less by function. This I did understand, making a mental note to be cautious (sometimes multifunction devices don't do everything that they do equally well).
He added the thought that consumers would want no limits on location, playability for things like movies, music, software, etc. And that DRM would evolve and must evolve in the direction of ubiquity; consumers would want free content; the technology should remain free (no restricting computers to play only watermarked content, for example). Solutions must work for data, software, movies, etc. And he added that it makes sense to build DRM on top of existing systems for authentication, like SOX. This makes sense.
Some of this began to lose me. Certainly, free content is popular... it's free. But it seems to me consumers are perfectly able to recognize that paid content (from cable TV to Lexis Nexis and Nintendo and on and on) is often just plain better. Google is fantastic and serves almost all of my search needs. But for some things, I MUST go to Lexis; for one, Google doesn't have an 800 number I can call if I can't find something. I just don't think the free economic model can support the level of service to which many of us have become accustomed. And why free content, but not free broadband service (marginal costs of providing additional units once built are also low) or hardware (heck, once the chip is invented, you can stamp out many more at pretty low cost)?
And I certainly think that whatever legal and policy principles we adopt to tackle the online IP problem must work for software, photos, blogs, music, movies. But I think the technology can be much more niche. This has worked well so far--indeed it is all that has worked so far--with credit card access for adult material, hardware ties for Nintendo systems, passwords for online games, and so on. When I asked JS about this he seemed a bit dismissive--paid content would just be for niches, not for the most popular stuff. But I just don't see it. And haven't we seen a consistent movement of content markets towards serving niches and away from mass market? Cable is much more niche than broadcasting. Games are way niche, and so on.
Building DRM on top of systems to authenticate the user is going to work well sometimes. But there was a bit of a disconnect--if the content is free, why would one bother to authenticate the user? Did he mean that one needs to make sure that the user had subscribed to the content as a service, but that the content would be without a per unit charge? Also, authenticating the user in a corporate context is an easier problem--the user sending in his SEC forms or a letter or what have you WANTS to be authenticated--but a lot of users looking to get free music, movies, or software won't WANT to work with the system. Somewhat different problem. So far, for most content providers, the content itself is at least at one stage within their control--the networks and users aren't, so it's understandable that they have gone the route of watermarking content.
Finally he mentioned a government role in standards, which seems to me to be sheer madness... government is slow. Very slow. And government standards precludes competition between standards, which surely no one wants.
In short, for a guy who likes competition, he seems awfully determined in the view that only one way is going to predominate or even survive. I remain skeptical.
Phew, that's all for now.
posted by Solveig Singleton @ 11:55 AM | Aspen
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