EU's DRM Proposal: Does It Solve the Right Problem?
The European Commission released it's Creative Content Online In The Single Market paper promoting an EU wide digital rights management standards. From paidContent.org:
Frustrated by lack of interoperability in digital rights standards, it wants to draw up “a framework for DRM transparency”, which would include not just interoperability but ensuring customers are fully informed of DRM-specific content restrictions before they buy. This move may be arriving too late if other entertainment media following music labels’ recent moves to embrace DRM-free, however.
But is the market more interested in DRM free content?
It isn't clear where these proposed ideas will go. We are already seeing DRM-free music in the US. I'm not sure the EU market so different that a pay-more-for-no-DRM model wouldn't work there. I think this is a case where less is more. Consumers are demonstrating they are willing to pay more for convenience to move content across devices and we're frustrated by what appears to be arbitrary restrictions. For example, why can we download movies from iTunes and play them on an iPod but we can't copy the same movie from a DVD without violating federal law?
Any proposal that reduces arbitrary restrictions on fair use is welcome but standardizing a the boiler plate legal text that describes arbitrary restrictions isn't much use.
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