I grabbed this comment on the newly introduced Canadian Copyright Bill. Yet another example of the flawed strategy of embracing DRM:
"I'm a software developer. I have a huge stake in this. If my business model depends on distributing my projects for free – a very successful model for many many people: start with every website that you didn't pay or register to use – then I need protection from people who force me to add DRM to my product if I use their distribution services. This bill doesn't even acknowledge this. What it does do is privilege one business model over another.
There's nothing illegal, wrong or bad about giving software away. The software that every developer uses to write every application ever written for OSX, the iPod and the iPad is free. There were people who sold software to do this: they stopped, and Apple is now the most valuable tech company. You have to leave room for people to distribute things as they want to do. The reason the App Store is a success is because of this free system, so its not as if free and paid software don't interact.
But this bill privileges one business model over another. If DRM-equipped players become the only thing you can get, requiring DRM-equipped media, then when I want to use that medium to distribute my free software, I have no choice but to equip it with a lock. The problem with this bill is that it says that if the creator - who obviously can't control what the player industry does - doesn't want DRM, he still has to provide it. And if I distributed a solution to allow users who don't have DRM-decoding players to do what I want them to do – use my free software – to get past the DRM, even though it's only my product affected, then I can become a criminal, along with my users.
All this to protect a dysfunctional group stuck in the 80's."
Apologies in advance for not seeking permission, but no such mechanism exists on the site I took this from. I'll chalk this up to my fair dealing rights as a blogger reporting the news.
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