Re: [mmox] Permissions (Gareth Nelson)

[Gareth Nelson <[e-mail]>]

"Strong DRM" of the kind that involves silly schemes such as sending
the content in an encrypted form AND the encryption key should not be
part of any standard. "Machine-readable licenses" are a reasonable
thing, and this can all be lumped into a field in the metadata.

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 7:49 AM, Jon Watte <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Gareth Nelson wrote:
>>
>> Or you could ignore it. Ask your own sense of ethics and your lawyer
>> what the right thing to do is.
>>
>
> I believe that we can, and should, enable the metadata that allows service
> providers to provide strong DRM. This means that the acceptable DRM
> scheme/schemes must be identified in the metadata, and a provider can then
> choose not to provide a resource to some peer that has not signed on to that
> DRM scheme. The actual mechanics of how the service verifies that the peer
> is signed on to that same scheme does not need to be treated by the
> standard; that's up to each DRM provider to figure out.
>
> If we do that, then the DRM worlds and the open worlds will be able to
> compete for the favor of the content creators and the users. Creators who
> don't like the open practices of some open provider, will simply gravitate
> towards the protected practices provided by the protected providers, and
> vice versa.
>
> Meanwhile, I think that the set of bits we've identified
> (view/copy/use/transfer/modify/derive) and the semantics for each bit
> (allow-change, deny, allow-once and allow-always) could and should be part
> of a required minimum schema -- i e, the service providers will publish what
> they attempt to enforce, and incompatible semantics means that no transfer
> of assets happen. That's just common sense.
>
> Note that this doesn't require the open grids to do or understand about DRM,
> or even to protect anything, for the benefit of their users. Meanwhile, it
> allows those who want to operate protected-but-interoperable grids to do so,
> for the benefit of their creators. Everybody wins.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> jw
>
>