UK Government Advised to Promote and Adopt DRM

aking137 writes "From ZDNet, the UK Broadband Stakeholders Group (BSG) are recommending '...actively promoting the development and spread of global DRM-related standards' on the grounds that 'The UK's broadband boom is likely to falter unless more progress is made towards combating digital piracy'. Also in the article: 'The massive popularity of peer-to-peer networks also needs to be urgently addressed, the BSG said.'" The report (pdf) is online.

Check your source, fellas...

[sharky611aol.com]

A little sampling of the members of this "Broadband Stakeholder Group":

AOL Time Warner

British Music Rights

Universal Studios

Panasonic

And my favorite: "The Work Foundation" (a fully owned subsidiary of The Human Fund) Source: Broadband Stakeholder Group's Website [broadbanduk.org]

And remember, never attribute to studpidity that which can more accurately be attributed to a global conspiracy.

Re:Wait a damn minute...

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

All DSL ISPs assume that you will not use your bandwidth. Seriously. Yes, they market it as a 24/7 512Mb or whatever service but they assume that you will never use it at full capacity at anything like that level. Look at the situation not long ago with NTL: that 1Gig a day cap they were proposing works out at less than a fifth of the possible download capability of a 512Kbps line. And NTL were complaining about that 1Gb putting too much of a load on their systems. This is true, to an extent, but the real problem from their point of view is that if users actually use all the bandwidth they are paying for then the IPS's has to pay out more than they'd like. If ISPs actually expected everyone to use their connection at anything near full capacity they would increase the price, probably dramatically.

Re:Likely to falter?

[Doctor7]

You're all assuming that this advisory group is made up of ISPs. It's not, it's made up of content distributors.

Re:Why don't you like DRM?

[Safety State]

You know, I've come to wonder what issues people really honestly have with DRM.

DRM is Digital Rights Management. It manages your rights.

DRM does nothing for the person whom it is controlling. People often point to encryption as a benefit of DRM, but encryption (real, secure encryption, not the kind where you trust one company to keep your secrets for you) has no need for DRM to work well. DRM exists solely to allow remote control over what end users can do with their computers.

You ask why people don't like DRM. It decides what you can and cannot do, enforced by the power of legislation that makes felons of violators. But -- and this is where it gets important -- it isn't managing your rights according to what's legal. It's managing your rights according to what the companies owning/subscribing to the system decree.

This means that you can try to do something that is totally legal, and DRM can block you before the fact. If you try to bypass it to do something which is completely legal, you're a criminal anyway due to the anti-circumvention laws.

The benefits of DRM for laymen:
http://safetystate.com/ss.cgi?action=material&id=7 [safetystate.com]