The Rise of the Righteous DRM Rebel

Now that it's been confirmed that the HDCP master key really has been released (CNET), that leads me to wonder how it got there.  The CNET article today suggests that it was not cracked digitally, but rather leaked.

The Old Way To Copy (Wikimedia Commons)

All this makes me think that DRM today feels a bit like an overstretched imperial regime facing a nimble guerilla insurgency.  The DRM guys have the lawyers, the money, and the government on their side.  For most people, that's enough to deter them from any kind of piracy.  But not everyone.

My colleague, Saul Berman, always said there were two big groups of consumers that the content industry should care about: the cool kids and the massive passives.  The massive passives are paying for content, they want to sit back and enjoy.  The cool kids, by contrast, don't have any money (their kids, after all) but they've got a lot of free time.

With the cool kids, the industry loses some money, but not a whole lot.  For high income adults, the time required to infringe on copyright and risk to their financial assets isn't worth it.  For kids, however, even if they copy, it's not likely they would have bought if they could have in every case.

But we have a new and growing group in this game: I'll came them the righteous rebels.  They don't like DRM because it's evil.  They're not in this for the free movies.  They're in this because it's morally wrong and economically destructive.  And both government and industry keep fueling the fire:

• The DMCA restricts free speech for security researchers (Wikipedia)
• Russian government uses copyright licensing to silence dissidents (New York Times)
• ACTA treaty restricts freedom of expression and privacy (Wikipedia)

There have always been people who said that knowledge just wants to be free.  I can't agree with them: intellectual creations must be encouraged with proper protection.  Without some restraint, however, we could bring the whole regime down.