Cory on Digital Lysenkoism
I can’t find the article that first shifted my thinking about DRM, that the piracy argument was a red herring. I really enjoy Seth Schoen’s talk as part of the Fulbright speaker series where he clearly characterized DRM as having more to do with controlling innovation than stopping piracy.
Cory’s Guardian piece about DRM as a bunkum idea comparable to Lysenkoism under a Stalinist Soviet Union.
This is silly: DRM can’t make an honest person more honest. In fact, once a person has opted to buy - rather than pinch - your movie, all it can do is cause frustration. Why? Because DRM stops people from doing legitimate things - like using a new device (for example, playing a song from the iTunes store on a non-Apple player); like backing up a file; like selling, loaning or giving away a movie.
As fruitless and wasteful as Lysenkoism ultimately proved to be, he makes a superb case that DRM is at least as bad. And further speaks to how those in the industry making these protection technologies know.
I think he missed an aspect of the metaphor, though, one that makes the link deeper. Just as Lysenko believed he could directly, physically alter the nature of an existing organism and despite what we know of genetics, the same alteration would be apparent in its descendants, so it seems to go with DRM. As Cory has pointed out elsewhere, the cost of digital copies will only ever decrease. Those pushing and using DRM seem to be hoping that by grafting it onto digital media it will somehow just as mystically become an integral part of all subsequent digital media. Again, we know better.
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