UC Berkeley is throwing a Digital Rights Management conference Feb 27 to Mar 1. While there have been numerous DRM conferences held, they've all taken the rosy view that DRM is good, useful and lawful technology. The Berkeley conference pulls together critics and advocates and actually attempts to hammer out some kind of common understanding. I'm really looking forward to it.
Music is being released on copy-protected CDs, movies on encrypted and region-encoded DVDs, and Congress is considering the mandate of technological protection for digital television. The next generation of information distribution will be defined by the purchase of rights to receive digital content for a set of defined and controlled uses. Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems are the technological measures built into the hardware or software of home computers, digital televisions, stereo equipment, and portable devices in order to manage the relationships between users and protected expression. As technological solutions increasingly interact and even supersede the laws of intellectual property, privacy, and contract law, it is imperative for everyone from lawyers, technologists, and policy-makers to artists and consumers to keep up with the changes.
(Thanks, Eddan!)
