Doctorow on DRM

Though everybody’s been talking about it, I haven’t been in any hurry to reference Cory Doctorow’s presentation to Microsoft Research on DRM. I read and enjoyed it, but there’s nothing in it that I haven’t read, parroted and/or commented on elsewhere in his, Lawrence Lessig’s and the EFF’s work.

This speech contains all the usual points about piano rolls, consumers not wanting to do less with their music and copyrighted garage door openers. There is, disappointingly, no use of my favourite Doctorow phrase “dragged kicking and screaming to the money tree” (which I happened to use, thanks to Cory’s generosity and his Creative Commons license, here). I’m not being critical, it’s just that you, my dear readers, have seen these ideas before in earlier references to Cory and the other anti-DRM folk.

For new readers, or people looking for a good overview of why DRM is a bad, bad thing, Cory’s presentation is available in HTML or fancy, annotated Wikiness. I also must credit Microsoft Research for continuing to invent enemies (Dave Winer had some choice words for them a while back) into their kitchen.