Recently, there have been several discussions about the difference between services like Netflix and Rdio, that let you “rent” content from their library, and iTunes, which lets you “buy” content. However, thanks to digital rights management (DRM) these conversations are both arguing the same point.
When it comes to digital content, we’re all renting.
Andrew Milne on Digital Rights Management from bv02 on Vimeo.
How can this be? Well, in recent months, questions have been raised about what users can do with digital material they’ve “purchased” via platforms like iTunes. Can they resell a digital song, the same way they would resell a physical copy? Can they leave the song to someone in their will? The answer, it turns out, is likely no.
iTunes created this idea of buying digital content, and made us all feel comfortable with our purchase: a purchase that bought us a personal license to the digital rights to a piece of content, with very broad terms. Want to play the music on a different device? Sure, no problem. But can you leave that digital content to someone in your will? No.
So what then becomes of digital goods that ostensibly have the same content as physical goods? A digital album contains the same music as a CD, but when we purchase the digital copy, we can’t resell it or transfer ownership. Can you imagine the resell market for goods that don’t depreciate after you’ve used them, and are identical to the originals, which are still on sale? There’s a good reason DRM will try to prevent this.
The issue of renting vs. owning digital content hasn’t yet been significantly addressed in the realm of public opinion. When everyone realizes that DRM creates a rental model out of what we had assumed was an ownership system, that’s when platforms like Netflix and Rdio will really take off. They’re upfront about the rental system, but they offer a much wider selection of content, and it’s generally a seamless experience across all of your devices.
The only problem here is that we’re all so used to owning content: being able to stack it, store it and resell it, if we want to. Once we move past the notion of ownership with our digital content, we’ll change how we access content, how much of it we have access to and the entire business model around DRM content.
This is applicable to the role we play as consumers of content, but also to the role some of us play as producers and distributors of content. All of our clients, including the ones in education and culture, deal with extremely valuable content every day: new and existing academic knowledge, valuable cultural artifacts and more. Rights management as it applies to these types of content is well understood in the traditional sense, but digital rights management will emerge as a new challenge in the coming years.
Businesses and industries that deal with online content in any form – so, all businesses and industries – need to be thinking about how DRM will impact them. And the next step? How DRM will work with mobile experiences. If you haven’t considered this as it relates to your content, the time to start planning is now. I look forward to having a conversation about this with you.
Here are some links that provide an excellent overview of the current issues emerging with DRM as it exists today. These are the conversations that will drive change in the digital content space in the next year – take a look and let me know what you think.
A whitepaper from Harvard about how DRM is restricting access to educational material
The Canadian Heritage Information Network’s guide to DRM for museums
PaidContent’s take on the upcoming battles in the DRM space