I Want My Back-up Copies
I think DRM says it all. The intellectual property is stored and distributed in digital form on various media. Who gets paid for creating the intellectual property and who has the rights to enjoy the intellectual property they have purchased? How does the individual that purchased the intellectual property manage the digital property? I know my last sentence doesn’t really fit with the “management� in DRM, but I think it is the key issue - Information Management.
Napster was created because Shawn Fanning, a college freshman had a roommate that always complained that he could never find his MP3 music files and that he wanted to share his music with his friends. I think the key concept was that Shawn’s friend could never find his mp3 music files because they had become unmanageable.
Then came along DVDs and the digital movie files were simply larger than mp3s depending upon how they are ripped. Ripping DVDs to mp4s or other formats take differing amounts of space. However, with cheaper, larger storage devices, storing your personal library of digital movies is no longer an issue other than the original problem Napster tried to solve of course – making it easy to organize the mp3 files – Information Management.
I strongly disagree with Valenti that we should not be allowed to rip our own DVDs (make back-up copies) and manage and enjoy the files as we like for our own private use. In my opinion, the intellectual property is no different than that of computer software that we can copy and use depending upon the license agreement for that software. I also do not agree with his argument of buying a lawn mower and wanting another one if I broke it. If I could create a digital copy of my lawn mower, then yes, I would want to have a back-up copy!
iTune makes it very easy in my opinion to manage several thousand songs (mp3s) or movies (mp4s). I think Steve Jobs is reacting to pressure from consumers to remove DRM on iTunes music. It’s a win win for Apple to do so. Originally DRM certainly helped the explosion of the iPod and iTunes by locking in consumers and Apple could hide behind the record labels saying that DRM was required. Removing iTunes DRM for those individuals that want to pay the extra thirty cents can only help build iTunes sales as well.