Earlier on Monday we had decided to ignore the stories about EMI bailing out on supposed talks to sell unprotected MP3s as well as the story about BitTorrent launching a ridiculous "authorized" movie download site that even the folks at BitTorrent seem to recognize is guaranteed to fail thanks to the inclusion of DRM. However, trying to figure out what to write about the "DRM Panel" at Monday’s Tech Policy Summit has had me stumped for the last few hours until I realized that all three fit together.
The panel was supposed to be about DRM and interoperability, but barely touched on the interoperability part, preferring to remain firmly focused just on DRM. Again, I was disappointed in the panelists for not really stating much that was new. It was a stacked panel (again). Gigi Sohn was there as the sole defender of consumer rights and fair use, but missed out on multiple opportunities to points out that the DRM everyone else was defending wasn’t just about a fight between content producers and consumers, but that it was simply bad for business.
The rest of the panel, led by the MPAA representative, David Garfield, kept saying over and over and over again that DRM was important because it opened up new business models. Yes, we’ve heard this all before. We’ve been hearing it for years, and those business models aren’t forthcoming. When that was brought up, all Garfield and the others could say is to give it time. Unfortunately, people have been giving it plenty of time and all they have to show for it is that they feel like criminals in their own homes for doing something that’s perfectly legitimate, and worries about what MPAA-pushed legislation will invade their technology next. The reason there are no "new business models" forthcoming from DRM is that it fundamentally takes away value. You don’t create new business models on providing the customer less value. You create new business models by providing them more value. The "new business models" don’t exist, because they’re fundamentally blocked by the concept of DRM.
What became clear after the discussion is that very few people are willing to actually step back and realize this. Pretty much the entire industry has simply decided that DRM is the only way to make money — even with repeated examples of why that’s simply not true. With EMI, the talks broke down over the fact that the music wouldn’t pay up in advance to cover the supposed "risk" of offering DRM-free songs. In other words, EMI wasn’t looking at dropping DRM because it realized that it would help their overall business of promoting and selling the music of bands in its roster, but because it was hoping to score a huge upfront payment from the likes of Microsoftt.
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