January 19, 2007
Creative solutions to DRM
Ars Technica is reporting on a fascinating new "protection" scheme for digital media. Instead of attempting to artificially restrict access, something which has been shown to be futile, they simply make the files they sell unique and traceable. So you can share it with as many people as you want, but all anyone needs to do to implicate you of copyright violations is look at the file.
This, I contend, is very creative, and has the potential to solve numerous problems with the existing regime. There is no need to intrude into users' privacy. All a content owner need do is find out who bought it in the first place and sue them. The burden would then shift to the user to demonstrate that someone else uploaded the file, because it would be pretty easy for a judge to allow the inference that the user whose stamp is on the file can be held accountable for copyright violations if the file is found "in the wild" as it were. Res ipsa loquitur.
