More work today on my article with Danny Butt for the Media & Arts Law Review, on Digital Rights Management (DRM). It's looking OK now, but I find it hard to come up with clear recommendations in this field, just because DRM has been so thoroughly misused and misdirected for so long. The mainstream music industry's belligerence just isn't going to work, no matter how many people it sues - for better or for worse, the heavy-handed police state approach to combatting copyright infringements isn't going to be more successful here than it has been in the case of prohibition of alcohol or soft drugs, civil liberties, or, hell, (continuing with the papal theme of the last month) Christianity.
The shame in this is that there are many constructive peace-time uses of DRM, beyond the DRM wars the RIAA is so keen to wage. Creative Commons licences could be seen as a form of DRM, in fact - just not one that Microsoft et al. can make a quick buck from - and could be developed into a nice little alternative system beyond traditional copyright. (Of course this might also require Australia and other nations to resist bending over and annexing their copyright systems to that of the U.S., which by now is so throughly messed up that it's not funny any more. Any country whose copyright legislation bears the right of has-been pop singers should automatically be excluded from the Berne Convention.) However, we might not see any of this happen until the mainstream music industry has sold its last prepubescent Britney Spears clone or sued its last (equally prepubescent) filesharer...
Anyway. I also uploaded the wiki paper with Sal Humphreys today - have a look...
