I'm attending the Patents, Copyrights and Knowledge Governance Conference today over at the Carnegie Institute. It's full of hyper-knowledgeable people, though the discussions might be a bit dry to the uninitiated. Gavin Baker is live blogging during the panels.

I've been deeply concerned about the increasing amount of digital rights management (DRM) and other content controls that are finding their way into the services and applications that we all use. This recent xkcd comic sort of sums it all up:

The RIAA has been taking a lot of people to court -- basically, harassing folks in an attempt to curb file-sharing. The $220,000 verdict against Jammy Thomas got a lot of news (and probably worried a lot of folks). However, on appeal (i.e., after a new court not cherry-picked by the RIAA to try the case looked things over), the RIAA lost... again. ZDnet covered the verdict.

At its heart, the verdict reaffirms that simply making a copyrighted work available is not the same as actually distributing the work. In other words, copyright holders actually have to show harm before they can sue the pants off of people. More importantly, it lends yet more weight to the notion that our copyright laws are woefully out of date and that the RIAA has systematically overstepped the legal bounds of its authority under existing copyright law.

Fundamentally, there will need to be a reassessment of copyright and a rebalancing of the rights of copyright holders and the benefits of copyright to the general public. As Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution clearly states:

"The Congress shall have power to...promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

The goal is the promotion of the progress of science and the arts -- not to enrich copyright holders. Clearly, we've strayed from that core mission and Congress should reaffirm its commitment to the original function of copyright.

Well, here's the first case of confirmed massive so-called "digital rights management" problems with Windows Vista -- Apple is now telling its customers not to upgrade to Vista because it doesn't work well with iTunes. So if you buy a new PC computer today -- you may not have access to your completely legal iTunes media. As I've said before, if you can control content on the end-users' devices, Network Neutrality really doesn't matter.

This is just the first of what will most certainly be widespread DRM problems -- since the Operating System is deciding for users what media they can and cannot consume. For Apple (which has huge resources as well as direct partnerships with Windows), the solution is to create patches so that their media will be exempted from Vista's draconian DRM. But what about for everyone else? Here's the list of just some of the Windows DRM problems straight from Apple's website, including things like
refusing to play legally bought media and turning your iPod into a really expensive doorstop if you follow the Windows "Safely Remove Hardware" instructions (I kid you not!):

* iTunes Store purchases may not play when upgrading to Windows Vista from Windows 2000 or XP.
* iPod models with the "Enable Disk Use" option turned off may be unable to update or restore iPod software, and make changes to iPod settings.
* iPod models configured to Auto Sync and have the "Enable Disk Use" option turned off may require being ejected and reconnected to resync.
* Ejecting an iPod from the Windows System Tray using the "Safely Remove Hardware" feature may corrupt your iPod.
* Cover Flow animation may be slower than expected.
* Contacts and calendars will not sync with iPod.

My good friend Victor Pickard and I are thinking about writing some of this up in a new paper we're going to be working on, "Feudalizing the Internet: Enclosures and Erasures from Digital Rights Management to the Digital Divide." Stay tuned for more as we trace the Windows Vista DRM debacle.