[FC-discuss] Anil Dash: DRM and Friends

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Mon, 19 Jan 2009, Adi Kamdar wrote:

> For example, I can share a photo on Flickr with just my friends, or a 
> post on Vox with just my family, or display my profile on Facebook to 
> just my contacts. And then, if somebody ceases to be my friend, I can 
> change their status and they no longer have access to that information. 
> It's a unliateral, technologically enforced restriction, and 
> circumventing the restriction would be tantamount to hacking and likely 
> to get you banned from any of these services.

This is a question of who you give the content to.

> So, with all of that being said, how are privacy settings on social 
> networks different than DRM restrictions placed on media content files 
> from companies? Is it because I'm not a corporation? Is it because the 
> DRM technology is provided by Flickr or Facebook instead of by Apple's 
> iTunes or Microsoft's WIndows Media? Is it because I only 
> (theoretically) grant permissions to dozens or hundreds of people, 
> instead of millions?

DRM is a question of what digital chains you attach to the content you 
give someone.

Note that these are independent issues.

> This is a genuine question, because it's something I'm not sure I know 
> how to articulate. I can certainly identify the difference in *intent*, 
> but I am not sure I can explain the difference in *definition*. Feel 
> free to comment here, or post a link or reply to @anildash on Twitter 
> and I'll collect the best explanations I get.

It's a matter of who you give content to vs. how you handle the content. 
These are independent issues. You can give out DRM'd content to every 
single person on the planet (and e.g. disable reading aloud in a PDF), or 
you can restrict access but give out un-DRM'd image files. Or any 
combination of these; for example, you could give out un-DRM'd image files 
to anyone who reads your public Flickr page.

They're both ways to restrict the distribution of content. At the end of 
the day, they both require you to trust the person you give the content to 
not to break the scheme. DRM'd materials can be copied with enough effort, 
and so can "private" non-DRM'd materials be shared with people you don't 
intend.

The crux of the issue lies also in where you enforce the restriction. Do 
you put an intermediary like Flickr or yourself in the way before the 
person gets a file? In that case, when the person has the file, the 
recipient can ask a computer to do anything with the file, and the 
computer will obey. In the other case, with DRM, you ask the person's 
computer to disobey commands.

-- Asheesh.

-- 
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact...
 		-- Wm. Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream"