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[FYI] Technology as Speed Bump



<http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cmusings/2004/02/17#a604>

Technology as Speed Bump

Mary discusses more of the Digital Media Summit, including Professor 
Nesson's talk.  The closest analogue to his idea in the Digital Media 
Project's "five scenarios" is actually the Technology Speed Bump 
scenario, one that's now been broken out on its own.  

This scenario fascinates me for many reasons (its the motivation 
behind last week's post on release windows). One interesting part is 
the role of DRM.  Unlike in today's digital media market, DRM might 
have some use in preventing piracy in the speed bump scenario and the 
biz model Professor Nesson describes.  

Contrary to the content industries' hopes, DRM does not stop piracy, 
nor does it even reduce piracy by itself.  Rather, it can only reduce 
the initial number of uploaders.  Given that one copy can spread 
infinitely, DRM has been declared basically useless.  Moreover, the 
speed bump threat model has been declared dead.  The darknet paper 
basically confirms as much.  

But the darknet paper is also careful to note that DRM's affects 
might vary "in the presence of a darknet, which is connected, but in 
which factors, such as latency, limited bandwidth or the absence of a 
global database limit the speed with which objects propagate through 
the darknet."  Consider the plan Professor Nesson describes.  DRM 
becomes more meaningful because, if you can limit the number of 
initial uploaders, interdiction becomes much more possible and thus 
effective. Interdiction is tough if you have to stop myriad 
uploaders.   Moreover, by limiting the initial uploaders through DRM 
and their propagation speed through interdiction, spoofing can be 
more effective, because there are less good copies that need to be 
crowded out.  

These impediments will not stop everyone. But in the short term, they 
might form an adequate speed bump to create that new release window.  
Of course, interdiction and spoofing can be defeated.  And, as I have 
expressed before, I have significant misgivins about this scenario 
and am not confident that copyright holders will be able to keep up.  
But if they could keep up only for a short period of time, it might 
have some benefit.  Maybe.  If so, then DRM might finally have an 
effect on piracy, as it was supposed to, rather than simply 
preventing competition, legitimate uses, interoperability, and 
innovation.  Maybe.   

Posted by Derek Slater on 2/17/04; 11:47:47 PM from the General news 
dept. #  



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