Free Culture and the Digital Library Symposium Proceedings 2005 Page: 23
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S. Vaidhyanathan: Between Pragmatism and Anarchism
23
monopolistic provider before gaining access. One must apply to
read, listen, or watch.
The absurdity of digital rights management, and thus the DMCA,
has never been clearer.26 As technology advocate and novelist
Cory Doctorow has argued, DRM does not work, it is bad for
society, bad for business, and bad for individual artists. Rights
management systems involve futile commitments of resources to
the installation and re-installation of DRM systems, largely
because they break so easily. As Doctorow writes, "DRM systems
are usually broken in minutes, sometimes days. Rarely, months.
It's not because the people who think them up are stupid. It's not
because the people who break them are smart. It's not because
there's a flaw in the algorithms. At the end of the day, all DRM
systems share a common vulnerability: they provide their attackers
with ciphertext, the cipher and the key. At this point, the secret
isn't a secret anymore."27
Doctorow's assessment matches the record. Every effective digital
rights management scheme released commercially to the public
since 1998 has been cracked or easily evaded. So they have had no
positive effects, in the sense that they have spectacularly failed to
limit the unauthorized distribution of digital materials, what the
copyright industries call "piracy." But the very presence of such
"electronic fences" in the digital environment has had two negative
effects.28
First, and perhaps most significantly for the long-term prospects of
the copyright system, DRM schemes have frustrated consumers
and put them in an oppositional and rebellious position in relation
to the firms that distribute protected products such as copy-
protected compact discs and electronic books. Copyright users
have few qualms about cracking and evading limits on products
that they have purchased or materials that they consider to be parts
of their culture. Digital rights management and the frustration it
has generated have undermined the social norms that a healthy
copyright system needs to function. As a result, the copyright
industries that fought for the DMCA in 1998 have done more harm
to the principles of copyright than their opponents have. In fact,
critics of excessive copyright such as Lawrence Lessig have been
clear about their belief in real copyright as an engine of free
expression. Alas, the motion picture industry, the recording
industry, and Congress gave up on real copyright in favor of
paracopyright in 1998.29
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Halbert, Martin; Finegan, Carrie & Skinner, Katherine. Free Culture and the Digital Library Symposium Proceedings 2005, book, October 14, 2005; [Atlanta, Georgia]. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc97947/m1/27/?q=architectural+drawings: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .