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This is SO important, David.

Copyright has always had a 'first sale' doctrine that does exactly what you advocate. It was, at least in part, a concession to the former impossibility of doing anything else, but also a recognition of a common sense view that re-reading or re-selling promotes the goals of Article 1 section 8 of the Constitution.

I fear this has all been lost by casting the whole debate in terms of "intellectual property." I'd be interested to know: what was Microsoft's reaction?

r

Perhaps part of the challenge with DRM and the concepts that currently define intellectual property is a fundamental lack of understanding about the nature of information.

Information is organic, memetic; it has a life of its own and wants to move. It's an essential component, the inherent nature of information. Obstruct its movement and it will find a way around the obstruction or respond directly to the obstruction (not unlike genetics, yes?).

Were we to be able to describe this inherent characteristic more completely, perhaps information guidance rather than control would be a more realistic expectation?

I sure hope you got some of the bright, fresh, curious minds there thinking about that to which they all may contributing through their work/jobs.

At times, I've wished that I haven't read some of the books or heard some of the speakers that I have encountered, just because I have become more widely aware of systemic issues. That awareness, in turn, led me in my 20's to quit a very promising career because I disliked many of the effects of the rigged game known as banking ... the same re: big consulting firm when I was 40.

It would have been so much easier to just keep on working at the job i had, being pleasant and industrious and focused on addressing the responsibilities that were put in front of me. Damn that reading, listening and thinking stuff.

OTOH, perhaps you may have stimulated someone, some young genius (and her or his collaborative colleagues) to come up with THE one way to address DRM that balances our society's current and no doubt evolving concepts of creating intellectual property with the fundamental need for privacy and control of one's identity. Let's hope so.

Rob, the reaction of the audience I said that to - and I should probably acknowledge that by the end of my comments I was in full foamy-breathed rant mode - was sustained applause. Maybe they just enjoyed watching me go bug-eyed.

Rayne, yeah. In fact, I think just as "intellectual property" gets in the way of thinking about this, thinking of it as "information" or "content" also does. By the time you've reduced it to mere information, the issue seems to be about whether I can get paid for the bits of mine that you're using. In fact, the question is, IMO: How can creators launch ideas that make a difference, and what social infrastructure will allow differences to happen? Something like that.

Jon, I think the problem is that the product managers and techies at Microsoft that I've met over the years are different from the senior managers. (Having not met the senior managers, I'm really just guessing here.) The set of people I meet are driven by the same sorts of things that drive techies everywhere, including making a difference. The senior managers are driven, I'm guessing, at making a business. Those two things can, of course, go together. But the disconnect between the behavior of The Entity and the dedication and passion and smarts of the engineers seems pretty extreme in this case.

What if those corporate peeps are using you in a guinea pig sort of way, to see how intellectually type people think, so that they can market to YOU more successfully--being with your tech habit and discretionary income, and all--kind of like Ross on Friends? Give ya the creeps, don't it? I'd rather live hand to mouth in the mountains of my homeland.

"We apply them to our own context. We get them somewhat right or entirely wrong."

www.kissthisguy.com

We do really make them our own!

To be honest -- I'm getting a little sick of all the 'geniuses' waxing philosophical about why DRM is bad. It probably is, but say I'm a novelist and I put my ebook up on the net w/o drm. Everyone downloads it for free. Unlike authors who already have a publisher and are just trying to stimulate physical book demand -- a temporary tactic which will expire as soon as e-reading becomes more practical -- I don't have a publisher. All I have is an ebook.

HOW DO I MAKE MONEY? NOT A KILLING, JUST A LIVING?

You can wax philosphical about the evils of drm till the sun runs out of hydrogen, but until you answer that simple question practically, it's a moot point.

Hi David, Our lab is pursuing an opposite approach with funding from artist Amanda Koh. http://www.prodigalart.org/pages/mission.htm Her idea is that the artist should get half of the profits whenever her work is sold. So she is organizing a system of caretakers who agree to abide by this rule and sell only to other caretakers. The artist will actually be giving their work away to the caretaker, so enforcement is only moral, not legal. But morality is robust, so anybody who cheats is not able to get the next owner off the hook. We´re building a website to help keep track of all of this. If we can get this to work, then I think a lot more people will be able to enjoy art, and a lot more artists might earn income. We´re working on this at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/minciu_sodas_EN/ Peace, Andrius