As the U.S. Congress weighs mandatory digital rights management, the European Commission is also looking into the topic. A 43-page EC study of digital rights management gives a nod to fair use and privacy -- and then says DRM schemes are not only inevitable but a fabulous idea. A key excerpt from the study says the EC "should continue to encourage all players to develop operational, open and interoperable DRM solutions and to deploy them rapidly." (Apparently the EC has been funding such schemes for the last decade.) I've placed the EC study here in PDF form (thanks, Michael): http://www.politechbot.com/docs/european.commission.drm.030202.pdf -Declan ----- Forwarded message from Michael Kleinhenz <kleinhenzat_private> ----- From: Michael Kleinhenz <kleinhenzat_private> Subject: European Commission enforces DRM systems To: declanat_private Date: Sat, 02 Mar 2002 10:33:59 -0500 Hi Declan, maybe something for your list: Yesterday I was at a workshop of the European Commision on Digital Rights Management Systems. I held a talk about the weaknesses of DRMs and the chances of Open Content like business models. Most of the about 100 people attending the workshop were representatives of the content industry or manufacturers of DRM systems. Therefore my talk was not really liked by them (the usual "Open Source is like stealing" stuff). More interesting is, that my impression of this workshop is, that 1. The EC will continue to support the use and implementation of DRM systems on a broad scale. 2. Their recent directive on that topic (2001/29/EC) that has to be implemented by the member states by the end of the year will result in a SSSCA like legislation. 3. From the proceedings and my personal conversation with some of the participants, I believe that most of the content providers have not realized the facts: many people at the workshop have talked about systems like Napster, but I think too few people had the actual technological advancement in mind when talking of such services. I was the only one to emphasize the implications from things like Freenet which I think is unstoppable, no matter what.. In result, I was scared by two things: how the workshop was compiled by the EC (95% content industry, 5% consumer rights organizations) and the fact that many people there were so naive in terms of DRMs, their implications and their implementations. Example: everyone was talking about a common standard for DRM systems to support many platforms, but no one was talking about the implications of (software)patents on it. Attached you can find a Commission staff working paper on Digital Rights that may be interesting as well... Thanks, Michael -- Michael Kleinhenz LinuxTag 2002 - Europes largest Linux Expo kleinhenzat_private http://www.linuxtag.org/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE8f8dZmdP772DIp/YRAtmAAKCvoyIhw2I8WKYyZCn/SUoy7MMwawCgt9ih i8Y+c/Uz92LBfKFt+xJmjWk= =ZWTJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----- End forwarded message ----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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