unmediated: A View from DMP World

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May 06, 2005

The "6th General Assembly of the Digital Media Project" recently released a set of documents "providing an Interoperable DRM Platform". I've written before about the self-contradictory nature of their goal (A Perfectly Compatible Form of Incompatibility). Now we get to see how they plan to achieve the goal. And I have to say, the documents are a real piece of work. I could blog for a month just dissecting them; but I won't subject you to that. Instead, just a small sample or two.

The documents describe a world unlike the one we actually live in. They do this, mostly, by redefining words that we all understand, creating improved versions that are distinguished typographically by capitalization. (There is a whole document devoted to definitions.) When you enter DMP-World, you give up your rights; they are replaced by Rights. And unlike ordinary rights, which you may possess simply by virtue of being a human being, Rights have to be Granted to you, and they can be Withdrawn by a Creator. In DMP-World, you can't buy devices; all you can get are Devices. You don't whistle a tune; you execute Functions on Governed Content. The goal of all of this is to achieve Trust: "a state where Users, Devices, or Content Data enable Users to execute Functions on Governed Content".

All of this is done with little if any reference to copyright law. There is plenty of talk about "protection" and "intellectual property" and, of course, Rights. But not much is said about the actual scope of copyright law or its correspondence to the structure of DMP-World. Instead, DMP-World seems to redesign copyright from the ground up, replacing it with something much broader, and yet at the same time much less precise. Copyright law, for example, explains with moderate precision which types of works it covers and which it doesn't cover. In DMP-World, the system covers Works. What is a Work? Here's the explanation (from document 2, p. 13), which I swear I'm not making up:

The first object identified and to which IP is attributed to in the Creation Model is Work. Work refers to the fruit of an effort undertaken by an individual or group of individuals that constitutes the logical construct that persists independently of the innumerable possible physical representations of that construct. A Work on the one hand can be very concrete by being unequivocally identified through a large number of differing manifestations all of which are perceived as being of the Work yet it is also ephemeral in that proof of its existence requires the use of physically perceivable resources that are not of the Work. The Work is somewhat like an invisible hand that gives shape to a glove.

ms, it a lot like the Tao: both concrete and ephemeral, existing independently of physical manifestations, and knowable only through its tendency to give shape to the world. The Tao is even described, sometimes, using the hand/glove metaphor.

To aid your understanding, here is Lin Yutang's translation of the first chapter of the Tao Te Ching, which does seem oddly relevant to DMP-World:

The Tao the can be told of
Is not the Absolute Tao;
The Names that can be given
Are not Absolute Names.

The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth;
The Named is the Mother of All Things.

Therefore:
Oftentimes, one strips oneself of passion
In order to see the Secret of Life;
Oftentimes, one regards life with passion,
In order to see its manifest forms.

These two (the Secret and its manifestations)
Are (in their nature) the same;
They are given different names
When they become manifest.

They may both be called the Cosmic Mystery:
Reaching from the Mystery into the Deeper Mystery
Is the Gate to the Secret of All Life.

make things perfectly clear.

Via Freedom to Tinker

Originally posted by Edward W. Felten from Freedom to Tinker, remediated by yatta on May 6, 2005 at 12:11 AM