Law Students

HBO Wants to Change DRM to Something More Friendly

By Law Vibe

From Ed Felten:

People have had lots of objections to Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology ? centering mainly on its clumsiness and the futility of its anti-infringement rationale ? but until recently nobody had complained that the term ?Digital Rights Management? was insufficiently Orwellian.

That changed on Tuesday, when HBO?s CTO (Chief Technology Officer), Bob Zitter, suggested at an industry conference that DRM needs a name change. Zitter?s suggested name: Digital Consumer Enablement, or DCE.

The irony here is that ?rights management? is itself an industry-sponsored euphemism for what would more straightforwardly be called ?restrictions?. But somehow the public got the idea that DRM is restrictive, hence the need for a name change.

Zitter went on to discuss HBO?s strategy. HBO (Home Box Office) wants to sell shows in High-Definition, but the problem is that many consumers are watching HD content using the analog outputs on their set-top boxes ? often because their fancy new HD televisions don?t implement HBO?s favorite form of DRM. So what HBO wants is to disable the analog outputs on the set-top box, so consumers have no choice but to adopt HBO?s favored DRM.

Which makes the nature of the ?enablement? clear. By enabling your set-top box to be incompatible with your TV, HBO will enable you to buy an expensive new TV. I understand why HBO might want this. But they ought to be honest and admit what they are doing.

I can think of several names for their strategy. ?Consumer Enablement? is not one of them.

Full post as published by Law Vibe on December 27, 2007 (boomark / email).