UK Rejects Citizens' Anti-DRM Petition

An electronic petition of the UK Prime Minister’s office that garnered 1,414 signatures calling flatly for a ban on the use of digital rights management techniques in all digital content, was not as flatly - though quite clearly - rejected on Monday. A December report commissioned by Her Majesty’s Treasury may have prompted the rejection, having assessed the state of the global intellectual property system, and having acknowledged its fitness for purpose with “a qualified ‘yes.’”

Clearly taking a stand on behalf of content rights holders, the PM’s office stated, “Many content providers have been embedding access and management tools to protect their rights and, for example, prevent illegal copying. We believe that they should be able to continue to protect their content in this way. However, DRM does not only act as a policeman through technical protection measures, it also enables content companies to offer the consumer unprecedented choice in terms of how they consume content, and the corresponding price they wish to pay.”

The petition itself had been straightforward and to the point, reading in its entirety, “We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Ban the use of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies for digital content.”

However, the Details paragraph which accompanied the petition online sounded a more conciliatory – and some might say, contradictory – tone. Citing a June 2006 report from a bipartisan commission called the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group (APIG), Neil Holmes, representing the Free Software Foundation’s DefectiveByDesign.org group, urged the government to take a further step by banning DRM outright.

The APIG report recommended that government refrain from making DRM systems mandatory, and urged lawmakers to come up with some kind of labeling system to warn consumers of content that contains protection measures, though it tacitly approved of content producers’ use of DRM.

“We believe DRM removes the freedom of choice between competing products and locks users into using a particular service,” reads the Details paragraph with the petition. “We do not believe that digital content should be cost free, but it should be provided in such a way that a person who has purchased a copy of it has control over that copy.”

The paragraph ends there without specifying how such control can be obtained without the use of DRM.

The APIG report may have tried to offer just such a provision, by suggesting that it may be public confusion over the nature of the underlying technologies that has helped generate a kind of generic negative connotation around DRM. “Confusingly, some people appear to use ‘Digital Rights Management’ to mean just RMI [Rights Management Information] technologies,” the report reads.

RMI is but one part of DRM, the other part consisting of the Technological Protection Measures (TPM) producers may adopt when enforcing content holders’ rights. If you throw out DRM as a whole just because you don’t like the TPM, the report implies, you could also be throwing away the RMI information that’s critical to recognizing the rights of copyright holders.

“Historically, new technologies have been opposed by those with a vested interest in the status quo,” the report goes on, citing the initial rejection of digital synthesizers by musicians’ unions, and of VCRs by the film industry. DRM, in APIG’s view, is the latest example of history repeating itself: “Some content providers have not embraced DRM. In particular the ‘independents’ in the music business have generally taken the view that permitting copying helps rather than hinders.”

APIG cites the popular British group Arctic Monkeys, which has taken a public stand against DRM and has distributed much of its music over the Web since its inception, as one such entity that is behind the times.

Such groups could wake up and embrace the future, the report continues, if they would concede that TPM measures create new distribution channels for them. “There are many ways in which consumers could benefit from new business models based on rights holders being more prepared to make digital content available - because they are using TPM,” the report states. “For example, it could spell the end for the ‘time windows’ traditionally used by movie distributors so that films are available first in the cinema, then on premium DVD and pay-per-view television - and finally on free-to-air television and low-cost DVD.”

European copyright law protects rights’ holders claims over an original work for 50 years. TPM measures, the APIG report states, tend to enforce those rights by, among other means, restricting downloaded music and video to a single format, hampering individuals’ ability to transfer their content between systems.

When members of Parliament brought up the topic of whether 50 years was too short a period, after which time, the floodgates would open for individuals anxious to exploit content for their own purposes, APIG’s majority apparently determined that 50 years was just fine, for a startling reason: In half a century’s time, they concluded, the devices on which those songs played probably won’t exist anyway.

Furthermore, the notion of interoperability between such formats probably will not have been worked out by that time, as APIG states: “Whatever the dangers are perceived to be, locking up material ‘forever’ is somewhat of a theoretical issue at the moment, since, in practice, material is very seldom available in a single format; and, for new material created today, unfettered access will not be an issue until very much later this century.”

Members of the Coral Consortium – an alliance to develop a single industry standard for DRM interoperability – may have been shocked to discover their efforts aren’t likely to come to fruition until sometime following Super Bowl XCI.

The Prime Minister’s office referred individuals to an HM Treasury report called the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property. That report cited the need for a strong intellectual property system, especially in order to help members of the open source community to maintain their respective rights over how they wish for content to be openly distributed.

“This [open licensing] model means that firms capture the value of ideas even if they do not use them in an end product, which in turn increases the incentives to innovate,” the Gowers Review reads. “IP allows this sharing by conferring property rights and enabling a market to form.

“DRMs can be legitimately employed, and where they are they should be robust,” it continues later, referring back to the APIG report. “The Review believes there is a need for clearer guidance on DRM for users, and encourages the [Department of Trade and Industry, which oversees the UK Patent Office] to work with industry looking into labeling media. In the event that companies use DRMs to create market power, damage users’ software or invade their privacy, the Review recommends that the Office of Fair Trading undertakes investigations.”

In its rejection of the petition, the Prime Minister’s office refers to this labeling program which the Gowers Review recommends: “It is clear though that the needs and rights of consumers must also be carefully safeguarded. It is reasonable for consumers to be informed what is actually being offered for sale, for example, and how and where the purchaser will be able to use the product, and any restrictions applied. While there is good reason to expect the market to reach a balance as these new markets develop, it is important that consumers' interests are maintained in the meantime.”

What appears to be DefectiveByDesign.org’s response to the PM’s rejection and the reports which that rejection cites reads, in its entirety, “Unfortunately, they are drinking the Big Media coolaid.”