Re: [Fsfe-uk] Interview: Ashley Highfield on BBC's DRM'd iPlayer

[Dave Crossland]

On 19/11/2007, Ciaran O'Riordan <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071118205358171

"Ashley Highfield: Well, they started from the principle of, "We just
don't know the way this market is going to develop. We don't want any
of our content to be made available." A lot of the rights holders are
not at all familiar with this world. They are often writers, or
directors, or producers -- and for them, they can see that this world
has opportunity, but they also see that it has great risk of
undermining their current business. And so this is something that
we've had to take them on a journey with. And the initial point was,
yes, convincing them that the content was well-protected, that once
they understood enough about copyright and digital rights management
to want to be assured that the content would be available free within
the UK but not freely copying available outside the UK. And we had
auditors in to demonstrate that that was the case."

This reminded me of something Eben Moglen said at
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2420/stories/20071019507610000.htm :

"What's happening is that, at one and the same time, the digital
revolution is offering capitalists the undreamt of possibility that
they can continue to charge large prices for goods that have no cost
of manufacture and distribution. That is the bonanza. That is
perfection for capitalism. Profit becomes the whole of the price. It's
a very great dream for them.

"At the same time, they are facing the possibility of complete ruin if
we move to a voluntary distribution system in which they no longer own
anything but perform services to creators. Because then, in
distributing culture, they must compete with children and lovers and
people who distribute culture just because they want to. So there is a
competitive crisis building.

"On the one hand, their pay-off matrix shows in the positive side some
very large numbers. And on the negative side, their pay-off matrix
shows equally large negative numbers. There is no saddle point in this
game, the game theoreticians would say. The game itself does not give
you an optimum strategy.

"There are two possibilities: they have superior force, and so they
coerce the game to the cells in which they win. Or we have superior
force in which case they must change their way of doing business.
Unfortunately, there is really no choice in the middle. The middle
becomes hard to hold because the ends are so attractive.

"So, international capital at one and the same time sees that it has
opportunities beyond its wildest dreams and it has challenges that
might put it out of business. This produces that same uneasiness that
beset capital when it first encountered the communist movement in the
middle of the 19th century. And so I took the moment at which it
encountered communism and I changed a few words to show how it works
at the opening of the 20th century. And the spectre of free
information that haunts capitalism now is like the spectre of
communism that haunted it in the 19th century with just one exception;
this one works. The communists of 1867 were writing about something
that they hoped to do. We are writing about the spreading out of
something we have already done. This one is already showing that it
can happen."

-- 
Regards,
Dave