Siggraph: Taking on fair use, privacy and DRM | CNET News.com
[Sony Pictures Entertainment exec] Singer acknowledged that there will always be piracy from "those who have more time than money," such as college students, but that Sony's aim is to make content convenient and reasonably priced and reasonably restricted enough to prevent general working consumers from going to other channels.
Take a second look at that quote. OK, now let me tell you how that logic falls apart.
In the digital, networked world, creating data (content) still has a cost. Duplicating and distributing data, however, is very nearly free. The economics of computing and networking create that dynamic.
Singer is basically admitting that a determined customer (those people with more time than money) can break DRM. Well, once that happens, the cost of copying and distributing the DRM-free data is so low, that data is available to anybody for free. That's why every song in the iTunes Music Store, and every movie in theaters today, is available without restriction and for free on the internet.
Sony's aim of "reasonably restricted-enough" content is a fantasy: no content can be restricted enough to prevent its being unrestricted and shared. Singer and other Big Content executives would do better by focusing on the convenience and price of their services as a way of "competing with free." They already are, whether they like it or not.
