A Little More on DRM
Derek Slater,
Feb 25, 2005
A recent paper from the Cato Institute has drawn the ire of copyright activists as it insists that while governments should continue to protect the "property rights" of copyright holders, market solutions should be allowed to define the integration of digital rights management (DRM) with peer to peer (P2P) file sharing technologies. But as Ed Felten points out, "the theory works, of course, only if the music business really is competitive. If the record companies act as a cartel, they can use the resulting monopoly power to dictate the design of DRM systems, regardless of consumer preferences." And he also argues that it's "not clear that we can rely on the DRM vendors to make their products interoperable -- they have little incentive to help their customers switch to competitors' products." Indeed, I would observe that the primary free market response has been to call on government for more restrictive legislation and harsher penalties while at the same time building technology that doesn't work and reducing the range and quality of commercial offerings. This business of pretending that some forms of government intervention are in reality forms of the free market while others are nothing more than communism - it's got to stop.
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