DRM: The (Possible) Downside for End Users

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[April 29, 2000]

Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology incorporated into Web products is inevitable, and in most cases will give content providers a "needed" measure of control over content that's been lacking. The technology -- though not because it is intrinsically "bad" -- will also have many adverse and unfortunate consequences. Some content providers will use the new technology in opportunistic, coercive, politically 'fascist', and other detrimental ways which, by design or mere consequence, will empower certain classes of readers and (conversely) intellectually disenfranchise other classes of readers. Some will argue that the new model will actually benefit authors, because now, for the first time, a percentage of revenues for that "sweat of the brow" labor can be returned to the person who really deserves credit, "because s/he had the ideas and beat them out on a manuscript..." Of course this is a lie: significant money will not be returned to authors any more than it was under the terms of "CCC" arrangement. Pure market dynamics will be powerless to prevent this, given the bankruptcy of the capitalistic model at this precise juncture. The worst offenders will eventually be confronted by consumer-rights advocacy initiatives -- publicly and privately, on both large and small scale.

For one simple example of the tradeoffs between (a) "freely accessible" and (b) "accessible only under terms specified by the DRM policy": consider the XrML draft specification announced by ContentGuard [2000-04-27]. Compare the first (hitherto common) method of "open access" with the second method of "DRM policy-controlled access":

• Open access

  1. Click on the URL
  2. Read the document in your browser
  3. Use "edit, copy" to create a text file containing the XML DTD

• DRM policy-controlled access

  1. Click on the URL
  2. Read the license terms
  3. Fill out the 18-item form with your personal information
  4. Submit the HTML form
  5. Open up your email agent and read the message from the 'administrator' which tells you that the specification (1) is "distributed in [proprietary] Protected PDF format" and (2) that you must have a special (recent) version of the Adobe Acrobat PDF reader in order to read the specification.
  6. Follow the instructions in the message for downloading the 5-6 MB application
  7. Halt! You're running Linux, or Solaris? Apparently you're out of luck. The required Adobe Acrobat version 4.05 is [2000-04-29] available only for Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh PowerPC. [so?] Proceed, if you're running Windows or Mac; otherwise, bail out.
  8. Install (and register) and fire up AdobeAcrobat 4.05, and then access the URL for the specification referenced in the administrator's email message.
  9. Oops! What's your native language? The specification's DRM technology uses a feature that is supported only in the English version of Adobe Acrobat version 4.05 -- not in the Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, [...] or other language version. Download a second version of the software if you are living in the wrong country, making sure to prevent any system conflicts.
  10. When the document has been transmitted, you are presented with a dialog indicating that you cannot actually read it because you do not have a license to read it.
  11. So connect to the host web site once again, as instructed, to find out more about obtaining a license... (says the dialog)
  12. Now download the electronic license (apparently specific to this particular document?) necessary to activate the PDF reader for the specification. This apparently involves the use of a proprietary Adobe Acrobat "WebBuy pluggin".
  13. At this time (you're still not done), you will be asked to provide your email address -- that is, the email address you first provided at the time you requested the specification, otherwise...
  14. Read the spec... if you managed to make it this far.
  15. However, do not try to "copy" any of the textual content using "edit, copy": the document is protected to prevent you from selecting/copying anything. What? You would like to create a text file containing the XrML XML DTD presented in Appendix B, so that you can experiment with the model? Too bad - not permitted. Keyboard the DTD on pages 84-99 of the specification, trying to make as few typing errors as possible.

DRM technologies which support micropayments ("we charge you to read by the minute, we charge by the character; printing to paper is extra, copying to clipboard is extra; the document automatically expires after N days and cannot be read; etc.") and related features will be used in a way that dramatically reduces accessibility and usability of 'Web content' which hitherto has been distributed under liberal principles of "democratized, free access." Legitimate "security concerns" will be used to defend the new policies. Some people who currently have Net access will no longer have access because they will not be (1) economically empowered, and/or (2) appropriately affiliated institutionally. Copyright principles have become meaningless and (therefore) largely unenforceable in the Web context, to the great frustration of publishers and content providers, whose opportunities for generating a passive-income revenue stream (from the intellectual property they cunningly leech/extort) have been limited. DRM realized now has them salivating. The net effect -- one can imagine -- will be not unlike (software) patents and copyright law, which overall have served to restrict the dissemination and development of good ideas. We have seen this all before.

More to come...