2006-04-17 #1

DRM protection: content vs. media

While playing with protected files I have come to a conclusion why the current form of Digital Rights Management won't work in future. It may either be the content industries ignorance or a misunderstanding of market forces.

Today, we have technologies that protect the digitial content files from beeing copied to or played where the rights owner doesn't want the files to be. From its point of view this is desirable. However, it also reduces the usefulness of the content. Apart from the unavailability on certain digitial platforms, it prevents innovation based on the content and effectively disables artistic work with it.

Now, it is a common sales model to resell the same content in different formats. Our parents bought movies as VHS cassettes, we have bought the same movies remastered as DVD. While the time span between VHS and DVD was relatively long, the cycles will become much shorter. Many movies are already available in some high resultion capable format. Nice to watch but still identical content. And here is the crux. The driving force for buying a new content container, just because it contains the same content in a somewhat nice looking way will go away if this happens too often in a short time.

Rethinking DRM schemes is in order. Similar to books, new content should be available for a fair price that considers the producers and consumers. Remastered content and digital copies should be handles like paperback books. However, with new technologies available older content can be remastered in new qualities. A fair model for both industy and consumers could be:

1. Buy original work with a token of ownership.
2. The token entitles to buy better quality media at a reasonable price.

The benefits of such a model are that there is a clear pricing strategy. Consumers don't feel ripped off and would be much more willing to pay for the better quality. With fair pricing for original and upgrades many consumers would happily buy more content. Just take a look at the iTunes store. In return many of the restrictions that make consumers unhappy could be removed from the digital media container.

In short words: Protect the content, not the media container.

The most important part of course, is to understand that illegal copies mostly exist due to monopolistic attitude of the industry and prices the consumer does not account as fair. Even more reducing consumer rights won't help here.