Talk:Digital rights management

Renamed article and other mechanics

I renamed the article "Digital Rights Management" rather than "Digital Rights Management (DRM)", as the title should be just that: not the title and abbreviation. Under CZ capitalization conventions, it really should have been "Digital rights management", but I myself tend to break that rule.

Also, I redid the definition, since it was identical to the lead, and contained a citation, which are not used in definitions. Howard C. Berkowitz 17:34, 29 July 2008 (CDT)

Challenges of the topic

It's always a good idea to build the foundation before trying to put the roof on a house. One of your challenges will be defining DRM without a working definition of digital rights, or, even more fundamental, intellectual property rights. Copyright is one such way to claim such a right; it's not the only one. Note that there is an article name conflict between copyright and "copyrighting".

In any event, you may either need to expand copyright, or create an article on intellectual property/intellectual property rights before you can discuss managing the rights to something undefined. The existing copyright article appears to link only to book as a form of intellectual property. Since the major areas of controversy in DRM seem to be entertainment and software, it would seem appropriate to establish background for them.

Just in these areas, there are some interesting challenges. For example, if I buy a perfectly legal DVD of a movie in Japan, why don't I have a right to play it on my US DVD? I am running a perfectly legal copy of Windows XP; if I add hardware to my computer, is Microsoft interfering with my rights of use by requiring revalidation? Why? Why not?

Howard C. Berkowitz 17:34, 29 July 2008 (CDT)

Costs of DRM

I'm not sure whether or where it fits in here, or whether it belongs in Windows Vista, but there's quite a good analysis of the costs of DRM on a paper by Peter Guttman [1]. It is under a CC license, so we can take material from it freely. It is controversial, however, so for balance we might need some comment on the criticisms of it. Schneier's comments are at [2]. Sandy Harris 00:37, 4 August 2008 (CDT)