Real digital rights management

We all have heard of DRM, about how it sucks, how it does not let us control what we have bought, it requires connection to internet for us to enjoy our game, it requires strange built in player to play CD on computer, it does not allow to copy our music library to another platform, all sorts of things. Not very good things.

Lately it has become less obtrusive - buying games on Steam, music on iTunes and e-books on Amazon, does feel all right, even if you end up completely locked in with vendor, it will run only on their platforms, devices and software. And require internet connection at all times. I guess vendors have just became, how to put it best, less dumb on how they implement their DRM. That does not mean it is nice, though.

Do not get bored - this is not just another blog rant about evils of DRM. No, quite the opposite in fact.

Problem is not in DRM itself, problem is in whose Digital Rights does it 'Manages'. Purpose of DRM in its current form is to protect content creators/owners/distributors from people illegally copying protected digital goods and in the same time provides them with nice proprietary lock-in and all the opportunities it brings. It does not however protects rights of me as a customer. My rights to actually own the digital goods.

Owning something is nice - I do want to pay for stuff that other have spent their time and energy to create, I do not want to 'steal' it, if I can avoid it. I do not want to give copies of it away to other people, if I have paid for it. But, I also do not want to pay full price of product once more just because it has been released in new type of disc, cassette, tape or vinil. Or because of moving to new device vendor, with my music library being locked away with old phone with no way of moving it. I do not want vendor to remotely delete or alter content I have bought. I do not want to have to buy again a game just because it has '3 activations' policy and after upgrading my PC three times, It wont work any more.

In short - I want my rights of ownership to be managed. Digitally.

DRM should be there, it should work globally. And it should be set in law that what I have bought, is mine and stays mine. And no-one has a right to ask me to pay for it again. If it can be considered a theft, when someone copies it, then it should be likened to physical good in other senses as well.

How would that work? There should be global, distributed DNS style system - maybe with not so many nodes, but still - that would aggregate what does everyone own electronically. And yes, it is obvious that there are huge privacy issues stomping around the room with lifted snout and scary tusks. Yes, but as I wrote in my previous post - better methods of identification in intertubes can not be avoided and has to be embraced as our loving and caring overlords of the future.

So, if there is a system that clearly identifies what I own, then no-one will ever be allowed to ask me to pay for the same thing away. Done with the Nook and want to move to Kindle?  No problem - get the device and your book collection should be already there. And web book store managers can actually create innovations, increase productivity, widen their offerings - do some actual competition with service against service, instead of just trying to reach large enough locked in customer base.

Imagine the competition if each and every vendor will compete only in quality of service, selection, ease of use?

And of course, such system would have to be global. And as we see with example of Internet, such global distributed systems are possible to make and they can be very hard to break after they have grown fully. Imagine if someone would want to lure you over from Internet to AooleSoftNetwork or something like that, owned by single corporate entity? The same feeling you would feel when someone would want to take away your real DRM and replace it with cloud stored, remote wipeable, content-you-do-not-really-own-but-are-licenced-to-use nonsence.

With such a system, governments will not be that easy to lobby into creating laws like additional semi-private tax for empty storage media,  additional tax if you listen to music you own 'publicly', or even make it illegal if you simply listen to your own music, in private, but with a method 'they' do not like.

Of course, comparing to system like Internet, there are mountains of legal problems to overcome - rights to distribute content is country based, different countries have odd laws on what is allowed to be sold and what is not (e.g violence = ok, sex = bad type of laws).

And no, various types of open/free content licenses are not the ultimate answer. Creative Commons work would fit ok within Real DRM schema though, it will not be that useful to ascertain your rights to something that is free though. And maybe governments will be more keen on them as well.

Problem with those licenses are that they are for work that creator wants to to be free. But what if I, as a creator, want to charge every single user of my work? Even if it is pay as much as you want scenario, I still want (and need) to earn money, and for that, creative commons does not feel well suited. If I want to enjoy protection (albeit limited) of protection laws, it will not be possible with such license.

And given that more and more of global economy is becoming services as opposed to goods goods, and digital services/digital goods (hard to draw a line there I guess) are also getting larger and larger share of the economy, It feels certain, that all of that will never be for free, hence the need for proper ownership control.

And yes, if there is re-re-release of Starwars: Episode IV, I do not want to pay full ticket price. Just the price for added value since last time I have seen it.

Local system evolution

If you talk with anyone who has been IT world for a while and has actually listened to what is going around, you will hear a lot of stories of projects going wrong. Lots of money wasted, lots of good initiatives botched, lots of tasks unfulfilled. And especially true it is about big projects - bigger it is, more often you will hear that company x has cancelled project after millions of euros invested and several calendar years spent. Or government agency awarding too big money to fishy company to deliver something needed in theory, but never finishing, or overspending, or some other company suing said agency and delaying everything by seven years. Or combination of everything mentioned and some other progress thwarting nonsense thrown in. And everything too waterfall to ever reach finishing line, or too agile to ever gasp the whole scope of the project.

So, familiar stuff. What I want to suggest is taking more natural approach. And by natural I mean something that we could probably see in nature, not something that is natural in project management, government contracting and corporate life.

I want to think local and introduce some competition. First draft of my idea applies to local governments - in Europe we have thousands and thousands of local governments. Provinces, cities, suburbs, parishes, counties, townships and even occasional micro duchy. What makes all of those political entities similar is the level of independence they always strive for. Most of European countries have it written in their most sacred laws and most certainly every locally elected person does want to have as much local control as possible. And all that ends in hundreds of thousands of similar contracts awarded to similar IT vendors to build similar software that performs similar functions.

Of course, I bet there have been initiatives by national, federal and higher up government bodies to try and unify various software platforms. And most likely results have been either over budget, over deadline or without all functionality being delivered. And most likely all three factors combined. I might be wrong, but it certainly feels that nothing else can come out of solution that is imposed top-down to lots of slightly different entities.

My suggestion is to do build software locally, but with certain rules. Rules or framework, that is imposed top-down from as top down body as possible. Rules that govern such things as general architecture - modularity, interface standards, security level, source control, needed documentation, stuff like that. All that then is made publicly available for comments, ridicule and revisions. Next step is removing at least half of it - threat such rules like a good novel during editing, not as usually - by adding more and more adendums, extensions and clarifications. Make it a good read instead.

Next, push it down to each smallest municipal entity in a form of law. And force every single IT contract awarded to include this framework. And when software gets built, enforce framework by using spirit of the law,  not the letter. And yes, it is possible - why not to include reference to special arbitration court in case of any disputes. Arbitration court that would consist of wide jury of actual peers of vendor - geeks, scientists, developers and IT contractors of all levels. Once framework gets traction, it anyway will be easier to develop for that, instead of doing some hackish workarounds. And we will have achieved our result. Actually, we will be at the half way.

At this point, if we have for example HR system or payroll system, that is built using the same framework across hundred or two hundred organisations, but the same amount of contractors, we will have one or two hundred systems. Similar, but with different prices, support models, look and feels, functions and general user experience. Very different in many aspects - but, most importantly, comparable in apples-to-apples fashion. So, we let systems work for a year or most likely two - delivery times will differ from one place to another, anyway - and then we compare. And during those couple of years we do not let too much new changes ordered, so there is some backlog and some need for improvement is felt.

Then comes important bit - we do not make country wide beauty pageant to determine who did best, no, because choosing one would bring us back to the bloated mega project we discussed at the beginning. Instead we compare only locally, we compare cities, counties and hamlets that lie next to each other. Geographically local. Why? Because they are most likely culturally similar, they have similar history, similar people, similar politicians and most importantly - similar needs and hence requirements.

We do public comparison of offers from vendors who delivered first batch of systems, we introduce new requirements that were gathered for all systems and include those as well. We choose one vendor and after a year or two, depending on system complexity we have unified system in five to ten neighbouring organisations. Of course, it is not easy task to implement and year may sound a little bit too short to do that - but remember that everyone is working within the same framework, so systems are technically similar - and this newly chosen vendor - second level vendor - must be given very deep and good access to inner workings of all first level systems. And of course - documentation is part of the framework.

After second level is done, wait for a year or two and repeat. Around six to ten years have passed, and we have one good working system for every single local government in a country. And yes, it is time for a first picture of this blag. With colours.

And if you think ten years is a long time, remember that big top down projects can easily take just as long - but in this case, all those years everyone has had a usable, constantly improving system.
And yes, framework should not change more often than couple of times during those ten years. And if it is not too prescriptive, those changes can be avoided. Just threat it as a law - those do not changed too often. (At least, those that forbid something, those tend to hang around for eternity, but that will be theme of next post)

So that was first draft of an idea - next I thought about how to apply that to something less politicly awkward than local governments. And more interested in saving money and raising productivity.

So, what kind of corporation would be in any way similar to local government? It should have lot of branches that are a bit different, yet similar, more than nil of independence and bunch of IT systems. Well, everyone has at least one or two IT systems. So what would this branchful corporation be? Bank? No - there is as little independence as overlords can achieve. Manufacturing? Nope - not that many branches, and not that local.

There might be more, but currently I am thinking about retail chains that are built on franchise basis. Or any chains that are built based on franchise. Retailers would have only 3-5 systems per store, depending on what they are selling, while other franchises might have more.
Hotels come to mind - lot of stuff happens in hotels, reservations, many workers, big inventory, add on functions - restaurants, conference centres. And all that quite similar between partners, yet often with enough local differences. Different countries, different financial, labor laws. Yet similar idea.

Of course, when you build corporation and franchise from scratch - when you actually build those hotels from ground up, then all the systems can be adapted, can be unified from the start. But what when you buy? Merge? Divest? Leave other and join your franchise?

Even better if framework standards would be then set with some sort of industry associations - something that businesses have sat up themselves, and that can decide of such whole sector improving standards. While keeping an eye of all anti-cartel laws, of course.

Whole world is trying to merge, cut costs, improve - and doing it with local evolutionary principles might be a good idea.

p.s. any interesting examples of industries this idea could apply to?