Aboriginal Archive Uses New DRM

ianare writes "An application that gives fresh new meaning to 'digital rights management' has been pioneered by Aboriginal Australians. It relies on a user's profile to control access to a multimedia archive. The need to create profiles based on a user's name, age, sex and standing within their community comes from traditions over what can and cannot be viewed. For example, men cannot view women's rituals, and people from one community cannot view material from another without first seeking permission. Images of the deceased cannot be viewed by their families. These requirements threw up issues surrounding how the material could be archived, as it was not only about preserving the information into a database in a traditional sense, but also about how people would access it depending on their gender, their relationship to other people, and where they were situated."

How is this DRM?

This doesn't sound like DRM. It sounds like access control.

Re:How is this DRM?

This doesn't sound like DRM. It sounds like access control.

Depends on how they assembled it. If it's some sort of self-contained website-on-a-box, then yeah, it's probably a local DB (MySQL?) and local PHP with perms based on the profile info.

OTOH, if they rigged it as one big fat binary, then the access controls locked into the binary is similar in concept (though nowhere near as complete as true DRM which looks for a key, IMHO).

/P

Users *want* the rules enforced

That was my reaction, but they call it a "website that's not online". However, from the sounds of it, the users probably don't own the computers, so I would still call it access control.

If it is DRM, itt appears to have a major advantage of most systems

not your ordinary DRM

Strictly speaking, I'd say this is DRM. But it's not DRM as we know it.

The archive, housed at the Nyinkka Nyunyu Art and Culture Centre, contains photos, digital video clips, audio files, and digital reproductions of cultural artifacts and documents.

So this is simply a website with user management. Not everybody is allowed to see everything. This is different from DRM as Microsoft advocates it, where people would not be able to save these pages and images unencrypted onto their machines. Because, you know, they might mail them to somebody of the opposite sex!

It's highly unlikely that this website really relies on complicated DRM schemes (which would require Vista).

Re:not your ordinary DRM

I know some Koori's, that's how first Australian's (the politically correct term in Australia for Aboriginals) refer to themselves.

Actually the Aboriginal people of the area known as New South Wales call themselves Koori, the people of Queensland call themselves Murri, the South Australian's are Nunga, WA far west (around Perth) are Nunya, whilst in the Top End (Darwin Region) there are Larrakia, Tiwi, Mirar and Yolgnu, People of Central Australia call themselves Arrente, Marla etc. Whereas I am a Balanda (in the local language).

Before complaining consider _why_ this was done

Before complaining about DRM, RTFA and spend a bit of time thinking why this was done. The culture in question has a complicated set of rules about who can and cannot see certain images, rituals, etc. The anthropologist wanted to show them to the larger world without violating the rules of the culture that produced them. But wasn't the only reason: the restrictions also allows you the visitor to better understand the culture. Why? You might think that the best way to experience that culture to be shown all of it at once, but you should consider that men who live in this culture never get to see certain things. Think of it as a simulation of a culture. Use it to reflect on the assumptions you make about who is entitled to what information.

Not an uncommon issue for archivists

Archivists typically have to respect the rules of the communities they serve regarding access to materials. Sometimes that means, say, putting a bunch of somebody's steamy love letters under lock and key until all of the named parties have died off. Other times it means managing intellectual property rights. And sometimes you run into cases like this one, where the cultural rules regarding the material are more involved.

I still think my favorite example was a living history project - the researchers involved had been recording traditional stories. One of them was an explanatory myth about why it snows. The problem was that there was a strong tradition requiring that the story be told only when there is snow on the ground. There's a doozy of an access control problem, unless you take the cheap way out and declare that there is always snow on the ground somewhere.

Re:once again

I've read TFA. It seems to me that this is just the result of the very will of those people to respect their own traditions and that this whole thing was made only after it had turned up that they would not accept the archive as easily without provisions for preventing potential embarassment. They seem to be doing it willingly. I'm not sure it's about superstition, it's just about social habits. You think it's silly? Fine, you have the right to have an opinion, but I'd say it's their business. And I don't feel there's a harm, unless TFA is grossly inaccurate, concerning the situation there.

Given your comment, I'm wondering...

Given your comment, I'm wondering...

Can't they respect their own traditions without imposing technologically enforced access controls? What do they do when someone uses hard-copy information, or, to take an example from the article, a man viewing woman's

Re:Given your comment, I'm wondering...

What is the point of building an access control system like this?

You look at an example of why someone wants an access control system like this and you still have to ask?

Re:Given your comment, I'm wondering...

Or c) They want to honor their cultural taboos and they made a system that helps them do so.

to prevent accidents?

These kinds of taboos against men and women seeing one another, against talking about the dead, etc. are very common in the aboriginal cultures of Australia, and they take them very seriously. The Warlpiri language, for example, has a sort of sub-language called the avoidance register, used when people of certain familial relations need to talk to each other (a woman and son-in-law, for example) - the grammar's mostly the same, but the words are dramatically simplified, and often replaced with generic terms. And such phenomena occur in other cultural/language groups too - I believe there's something like it in Zulu.

It seems odd to you, but it's also how they want to live. They're free to leave where they live (and many do), and those that stay want to live the traditional way.

Re:to prevent accidents?

when was the last time you used a public restroom that was co-ed (and not single-occupant) ? They exist, but rarely.

I don't think I've even encountered a public toilet that was particularly educational, let alone co-educational for multiple races, sexes, etc.

Re:to prevent accidents?

I don't think I've even encountered a public toilet that was particularly educational...

Well, I think that Larry Craig learned a lot in that airport restroom!

Re:technology isn't culture

I gotta say, when I clicked through on this story, I was mostly expecting comments along positive lines. This seemed to me as well to be an interesting story of how the old and the new can coexist in new models. I really didn't expect all this player-hating. Weird. I didn't realize we had so many technological absolutists here.

For an interesting story with a similar theme, I suggest this Wired article [wired.com] from '99.

Re:Given your comment, I'm wondering...

Here's a bet: Within a few years, members of this community will find reasons for accessing the information that is "forbidden" to them, and the efforts to remove the DRM will begin.

If they make the decision to do that, it will be because they have also made the decision to leave the community.

The mores make the community, not the other way around.

Re:Given your comment, I'm wondering...

Depending on which set of research you wish to believe, they've been living this way for the better part of 40,000 years. Their scholars are not doing anything their social customs haven't done for a very, very long time. Whiteman scholars may already have access to everything, but that is not what they're concerned about. This is an enabling technology for them, in that it allows them to store their currently verbal history for the long term in a way that is in accordance with their traditions and for their own people. It is so their own people don't accidentally look at the wrong thing in their tradition. They don't care about you and I.

Re:once again

really, the days of secret ceremonies are coming to and end.

So, assuming you have an S/O, you wouldn't mind if there were YouTube videos of you doing the linen fandango with him/her? For that matter, why do you even bother to wear clothing outdoors when the temperature is warm?

Sounds unrelated, but it isn't once you dig deeper...

See, there are, at base, some things which any given existing culture likes to keep secret. Sometimes it's simple stuff like sex, sometimes it's complex stuff like not viewing your deceased relatives for fear that their ghost will come in the night and tear up your house.

Just because someone holds the beliefs that they shouldn't view the rituals of the opposite gender, or that they shouldn't eyeball videos of "hot cheating amateur couples!" on a website, doesn't mean they're supposed to go all Aboriginal or Amish in their lifestyle. And just because you think it's silly doesn't mean that they cannot and/or shouldn't self-censor as individuals or as a community. Odds are very good that this Aboriginal resource DB was rigged by request from the community itself, so why the hullabaloo?

/P

Re:once again

"Jingoism and bigotry posing as rational smug superiority. Nothing more."

I'd say ignorance even.

The reason why this is important, is due to the critical need for anthropologists to win the trust of many of these ancient tribes to study the practices so we can learn a bit more about how hunter gatherer societies organise. Back in the earlier days of Anthropologists studying Aboriginal tribes, the Aboriginals, knowing "whitefulla" had no real ability to use the dances and rituals in the "magical" way Aboriginal religions see them, they freely cooperated and would show the rituals etc. However a series of incidents, where the rituals where shown on TV and then seen by neighboring tribes, thus unleashing "curses" or whatever, led to most of these tribes stopping from trusting anthropologists to respect the conditions of the cooperation. This particularly occurs with gender specific rituals. "womens business" rituals are not to be seen by men (white men included), and unless the anthropologist can guarantee this, she won't be shown the ritual. But oftentimes she cant, and so anthropology never gets to study it.

Systems like this, where the community gets to decide the 'rules' of accessing the multimedia (a bit like creative commons even) means that the Anthropologist can finally win the trust of the tribe to do the studies needed to piece together the mysteries of traditional Aboriginal life.

You're kidding, right?

Alright troll, I'll bite.

You're kidding, right? The material concerned was created by the Aboriginal people, is chiefly of concern to them, and in no way impacts on anyone who doesn't use the service. WhoTF do you think you are to tell them that what

Re:Easily hacked?

Great, just what the internet needs. More dudes pretending to be chicks.

Re:Easily hacked?

Of course they could. But to draw a parallel, in Aztec society there were no doors. A horizontal bar across the entry way, however, acted as the most secure lock imaginable, because of cultural norms. Basically the same thing here about making a fake account.
-nB

Images of deceased persons

Precisely, this is why some TV programs over here warn aboriginal and torres straight islanders that "this program may contain images of deceased persons".

Re:Easily hacked?

It seems obvious that people could just register fake accounts with different details just to access info their real profile won't give them access to.

You're missing the point. As other people have already pointed out, unlike with normal DRM, in this system, the users actually want the rules to be enforced on them. It's more to protect them against accidentally viewing stuff that they're not supposed to while searching for other documents.

Consider it like the 127.0.0.1 goatse.ch line in your /etc/hosts file.

Re:Easily hacked?

Consider it like the 127.0.0.1 goatse.ch line in your /etc/hosts file.

Why, I do believe you have come across the simplest explanation of the system's motivation that a slashdotter would understand.