Family Holloway

(crossposted from CreativeFreedom.org.nz)

IP-Watch.org reports on what may be the first emperical assessment on DRM. DRM is currently protected by many nations, including New Zealand. The laws protect arbitrary DRM mechanisms and arbitrary restrictions rather than conventional copyright. The effect of DRM is to expand copyright in favour of the publisher, against public rights and against legal artistic remix. That’s the theory however, and this report goes further into the practical effect after nearly a decade of government protectionism for DRM. A different summary of the report by Techdirt, inside…

TechDirt summarise the study as saying “that there hasn’t been a catastrophic blockage of free expression, but clearly some had occurred, even though technology measures could have allowed the expression without seriously compromising the purpose of the DRM. More importantly, the study found that those who were stymied from performing legal expression due to DRM rarely used mechanisms provided by UK law to complain. This isn’t that surprising, but it does make an important point: gov’t officials are probably unaware of how much legal activity is stifled due to DRM, backed via gov’t enforcement of copyright laws. While there are many other areas of study to be done around these issues, this is a worthwhile study in looking at how copyright and free expression can conflict.”