Re: [mmox] Permissions (Gareth Nelson)

[Jon Watte <[e-mail]>]

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