DRM consultation response for FTC
If a company sold a chair, but it came with an End User License Agreement which stated that
you could only sit in it on certain days, during certain times? If a bank tried to sell a repossessed
house, but warned that if more than 3 people tried to live there at once, the bank would repossess
it? This is the situation with digital rights management, or DRM. (needs a transition, and another
sentence.)
DRM is an implementation of technology in the form of software, which is used in attempts
by the proprietor to arbitrarily apply restrictions. In practice, DRM is used to restrict
interoperability, and lock out viable, and legal uses, in the name of 'copy protection', and is
widely, and frequently bypassed. Often, this has alienated and hurt consumers of DRM enabled
products, and driven those who would have purchased the product legally to download it
illegally.
Perhaps one of the most widespread uses of DRM is on DVDs. Discs are limited in one of two
ways: The first of these is through the use of region codes, region-encoded discs, meaning that
DVD players will only play discs whose region codes match their own. For example, I can't play
a region 'four' disc (Mexico and South America) with my region 'one' (North America) DVD
player. The rationale for this, is that it is costly to make thousands of copies for cinema use, so
releases are staggered, with reels from the first countries being shipped to later countries in the
list, with local language soundtracks (in some instances) accompanying it. In order to capitalize
on the desire for the film, the film companies wish to retail the DVDs as quickly as possible after
the film is in theaters in the region.
All told, there are six geographical regions, with additional region codes used for aircraft and
"industry screeners". There is no doubt that these last two categories would be of benefit to the
consumer, but in neither case are the discs so encoded available for purchase, but there is no
technical reason why a