Re: DRM - Control Freaks -- DRM should mean "Digital Respect

["Bryan J. Smith" <b.j.smith@ieee.org>]

On Sun, 2004-01-11 at 18:14, Jonathan wrote:
> Great article here on the BBC:
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3383253.stm
> Excerpt:
> "This revolution (sic DRM) is clearly not about people taking control,
> as [Carly] Fiorina claimed - it is about the entertainment cartel
> exerting even more control over what we, the people, can do with its
> expensive and often over-rated products."
> "It's about restricting our freedom to use digital content in ways that
> fit with our lifestyles and choices. And it is about forcing us to pay
> more, and repeatedly, for stuff that we want to watch or listen to. "
> "It is also, crucially, about limiting our freedom to play with the
> stuff we've bought. "

I am for one sick and tired of the concept of "Digital Rights
Management."  I sure wish companies (and a few _do_ seem to be getting
the point) of "Digital Respect Management."  D-Rights-M is about
charging your customers as much as you can, often causing them to pay
_twice_ (or even 3+ times) for *1* license, in a "new profit model." 
That's just screwing over your customer.

D-Respect-M differs from D-Rights-M in the fact that instead of
preventing software from working, like the latter, the former "informs"
the user that the number of licenses has been violated.  It "helps" the
customer find how just how many licenses they _really_ need!  Best of
all, the customer enforces licensing _themselves_.  According to the
SPA, 70% of all software at American companies _is_ legal.  So if a
license _needs_ to be bought, there is a 70% change it _will_ be bought.

Again, software companies need to give consumers the tools to identify
what they really need, and they _will_ buy the _majority_ of the time.

D-Respect-M is _very_cheap_ to do.  Instead of coming up with stupid and
costly protection mechanisms, like D-Rights-M, D-Respect-M, is a simple,
bundled network-based analysis tool, which the software communicates
with when run.  No fancy concepts, no need to "protect" the software
from tampering, because the software is not an "enforcement" tool.  It
is a simply a "management" tool.

D-Respect-M does the following:  

1)  Allows entry of _legitimate_ license numbers, for tracking. 
Tracking is the _most_important_ part of software management.

2)  It tracks concurrent and/or total client and/or server usage
(depending on how the software is licensed, possibly both/all)

3)  It allows you to set multiple levels of "notification," possibly
with custom logging options (optional).

E.g., one to notify "you have bypassed concurrent/client licenses,"
another to recommend if you are consistently bypassing the licenses on
select systems (i.e., these systems should have dedicated licenses),
etc...

Network and system administrators want tools to _effectively_ help them
_buy_ the right number of licenses.  So far, the overwhelming majority
of the software industry has shown they not only do _not_ want to
provide such tools, but such tools are very expensive from only a few
vendors.  It's not worth consumers to invest in them.

But it _is_ worth the cost for software companies to invest in them.  A
small investment will go a _long_way_ to "enpowering" their consumers to
finding out how many licenses they need.  And when they have that,
without the bullying and, worse yet, *SEVERLY*BROKEN* D-Righs-M
software, they _will_ freely buy them.

Consumers are very open to "respecting" their vendors.  But they are not
very open to vendors who demand "rights."


-- 
Bryan J. Smith, E.I.  mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org



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