Get Ready For DRM On Physical Goods

Mike Masnick — Mon, 4 Mar 2013 13:55:00 PST

Simon Phipps recently posted a short film showing the nature of DRM when applied to a chair, effectively demonstrating how ridiculous it is to build a product that is designed to prevent usage, creating artificial scarcity where none need exist: As he notes, DRM is really a form of "digital vandalism." While the video itself may seem a bit silly, some are certainly thinking about DRM for physical goods. At Mobile World Congress last week, a company named Fabulonia debuted, hyping up its "copyright solution for 3D printing." What's that? Honestly, it's not at all clear. It looks like it'll be a marketplace for 3D printing instruction makers who are overly paranoid and who don't want to participate on any of the much more open platforms for 3D printing instructions. In this case, the "DRM" isn't so much on the product, but on the printing instructions, which might be the same thing in the long run. Part of the way it works is that the designs get uploaded and downloaded, but apparently are somehow kept encrypted such that the "buyer" never actually gets to see the plans themselves.

Of course, most people would recognize that this automatically decreases the value to the buyer. They can't see the actual plan? They can't have it on their computer? Then why would they buy it in the first place? You don't convince people to pay by taking away a key part of the value. And yet that seems to be the entire goal of Fabulonia.

As with music, software, movies and more, these all are cases of imposing artificial scarcity where it makes no sense to do so. It's not just "digital vandalism," it's out and out economic vandalism, because you are purposely destroying a resource that can be used for economic growth. It's really tragic that people still think this is a concept that makes any sense at all.

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Do You Need Permission To Take A Photo With A Chair In It? You Might In France...

Glyn Moody — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 06:06:14 PST

The British Journal of Photography (BJP) brings us yet another story of aggressive assertion of copyright wreaking harm on artists -- the very people it allegedly empowers. It concerns some photos in Getty Images' stock library that have chairs in them. Because a few of those chairs are "famous" in the sense that they were produced by a couple of designers that worked with the architect Le Corbusier, the heirs of those designers, together with the Le Corbusier Foundation, have sued Getty Images in France for copyright infringement -- and won:

"Basically, there are two notions of copyright going against each other in this particular case," says [the plaintiffs' lawyer] de Leusse. "Photographers' copyright, and the designers' rights. Very much like a photographer needs the authorisation of people featured in their photos before selling them, they also need the authorisation of the intellectual property rights' holders when it comes to works of art such as these objects."

That, of course, raises the question: when is a chair -- or any other object -- a work of art? Because the logic of the court's decision would seem to be that before you can take a photo of any "work of art", you must get permission from the rights holder -- but knowing when that is necessary is difficult.

Getty Images is apparently trying to push that problem on to its contributing photographers, judging by an email sent to them, and reported in the BJP article quoted above:

You are responsible under your agreements with us to submit only content for which you have the necessary rights. Using this case as an example, while you may hold a copyright in a particular image or clip, if it contains even a fraction of a Le Corbusier piece then you may not have all the necessary rights under French law to provide that content and therefore may be liable for copyright infringement under French law in respect of the furniture featured.

This ruling will surely lead to an escalation of claims in France against photographers for daring to "infringe" on the rights of someone by including "even a fraction" of an object in their photos -- perhaps unwittingly. Which, in its turn, will inevitably have a chilling effect on photographers' spontaneity and choice of subject-matter, as they try to avoid getting sued by shooting only the most generic of objects, and under tightly-controlled conditions.

And so, once again, the assertion of an intellectual monopoly will lead to an overall reduction in creativity, with both artists and society losing out -- exactly the opposite of what it is supposed to happen.

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Get Ready For DRM On Physical Goods

Do You Need Permission To Take A Photo With A Chair In It? You Might In France...