Tag: Erik Davis

After talking to Glyn over at Open Rights Group at podcamp and then the Andrew Keen lecture, it's interesting seeing this post by Erik Davis (via Nerdcore and Boing Boing) about a case where an advance promo CD - something that exists as a symbol of trust between music critic and label, has now become a symbol in the wars over DRM and 'licensing' of Intellectual Property - especially this quote and point totally missed by the Boing Boing crowd, who I assume just skimmed the post and jumped for the rope: Moreover, the watermarked disc itself is, in some informational sense, alive, or at least virally infected with the digital ghost of my life. When I let that Beirut advance slip out of my hands, a little piece of me went with it, a chunk of virtual identity that I hadn’t agreed for it to appropriate and that I didn’t even know about. Instead of the old informal economy of circulating copies of music, I had become enmeshed in an emerging and far more claustrophobic world of endless virtual contracts and licenses, a world where objects command and the turn against you, where music has become data, and enjoyment little more than the processing thereof. (the emphasis is mine) The important points here are that when someone sends you something for free, are you really entering into a contract with them? Can you ever, when unbidded, and for their own monetary gain - a good review hopefully can sell albums - but no direct monies exchanged, people send you copies? It would be interesting if reviewers started ignoring DRM/watermarked releases as being too much trouble. I've seen promos down in places like the Record Exchange, marked as 'Not for Resale' but as Erik points out it, like 'illegal' yet record-label paid-for promo whitelabels, is actually one of those 'turn a blind eye' slightly seedy parts of the industry. Anyway, for practical reasons alone, what do you do with the millions of chunks of plastic? Throw them away? Burn them? Not very productive, or good for the environment. Surely recycling them to someone else who wants them is better? Most interesting is that the ghost of your identity can be enclosed into products without permission, and the repercussions can be terrible - which is why as we know DRM is EVIL. In this case it's easy for the Boing Boing crowd to tar and feather this bloke even though it was an honest mistake, but what happened if it had gone missing in the mail? Promos do get stolen, leaks happen. But if it has your name on it, that could have serious legal and professional consequences...and it seems like with ID cards and smart media even store cards, more and more data around our lives is being included into a diaspora of electronic devices, with little or no control if they go astray. I'm waiting for the first 'fit-up' where someone gets prosecuted purely on smart card (Oyster), mobile logs, digital watermarking or site log evidence to later to be found to be innocent...at the moment they seem to be treated something on a par with DNA, but unlike DNA they can be faked (although the statistical probabilities of DNA are disputed, either in millions or billions to 1).

Tag: Erik Davis

Digital Watermarking – a killer contract

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