Jeff Taylor of Reason thinks that DVD DRM hacks are the "best news of the year," a popular if shortsighted and childish sentiment. Is the idea that DRM is not necessary? While that might be true, the success of hacks hardly shows it. Is that idea that DRM is bad for and imposed on consumers? To any defender of markets, that line of thought isn't any more coherent than arguing that consumers are "forced" to buy apples at $.99 a pound because they cannot bargain with the supermarket about the price, forgetting the awesome power of consumers to walk away.

Some hacks are reported here from DRMWatch, along assessment of the economic model for hacks. Note that the "holy grail" of hacks is described as making decryption tools not only available, but readily useful to the average consumer, consistent with the argument that the DMCA by keeping such tools in the black/grey market, actually does *something* if not an ideal solution.

Several thoughts:

-Should DVD DRM be compromised beyond a certain point of toleration, resetting of the keys such that the whole platform becomes useless is... well, not going to work well. Perhaps the hope was to give each and every consumer the incentive to be anti-piracy, to protect the value of his or her own equipment? But the hackers are often motivated by ideology and won't care about preserving the value even of their own equipment. Thus preventing the contingent event, the intolerable hack, is really well beyond the average consumers' control; disabling existing equipment is just going to make consumers mad and make them hesitate to adopt the platform.
-On the other hand, the game industry strategy of periodically releasing new tempting releases that only work with new updated boxes seems to work. It doesn't disable the compromised older machines or the older content. There is consumer resistance because they have to buy new machines. But heck, the machines can ultimately be smaller and cheaper...
-One should be careful what one wishes for, one might get it. Much heralded is the demise of DRM. Think, just think, what pressure this puts on the plain old laws and courts as an enforcement system, and how it might respond to that pressure. Oh, think of it! The upside: One might end up with a splendid fine resolution to the problem--a quick and fair universal enforcement mechamism suited to the Internet, notice and take-down administered by angels . . . But think of the mischief that could be done on the way there, particularly in countries where the sense of fairness is not well developed.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 9:48 AM | DRM & Watermarks, etc.

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