DRM and Web 2.0
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 by Patrick Ross
Pike & Fischer was kind enough to have me speak
on a panel on Digital Rights Management and Web 2.0 this morning. It was a
broad discussion, involving the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, liability,
etc. I focused my remarks on the importance of remembering the creator. When we
hear about a spiffy new online service whose business model is based on using
someone else's content, and then copyright is raised, people say "How can we
ensure that people continue to enjoy this popular new service?" The thing is,
it's not the service that's popular, it's the creative works found on the
service. People have a strong personal connection with creative works, and
that's what we need to preserve online.
A gentleman in the audience (who didn't identify himself)
said he felt in this "new age" that people should be able to manipulate
creative works all they want online. I told him of a photographer I know who
makes a living - barely - following rodeos around and taking and selling
pictures of the rodeos. Should society get to have his rodeo photos? Sure, he
said, if they're already online. "Oh," I said, "if somebody steals them and
puts them out there, then we all own them?" This is no hypothetical, I said,
because this photographer is having his works spread around online without his
authorization. I later learned this gentleman worked for a consulting firm
called Verticon; looking at their web site, I was struck by the prominent copyright notices on
their software. I guess works should only be thrown into the public domain
when they belong to someone else!
