Privacy Advocate Rails Against Digital Rights Management

Communications Today, July 29, 2002

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is taking an adversarial stance in response to a recent Department of Commerce (DOC) workshop on the current state of technical standards for digital rights management (DRM), a still developing policy bound to have a reverberating impact on broadband usage in America.

Washington, D.C.-based EPIC, in comments filed with the DOC, decried the potential harms of DRM on consumer and societal rights. During the DOC workshop, panelists from the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, Disney, two record companies, Microsoft [MSFT], and AOL Time Warner [AOL] were largely in favor of stricter enforcement of DRM policies.

EPIC's comments to the DOC argue that existing DRM technologies, designed to increase predictability and security, invariably do so at the expense of consumers' rights to privacy, freedom of expression, and "fair use," as well as the general promotion of science and the useful arts. Far from creating positive conditions for commerce, EPIC argued that DRM subsidizes inefficient channels of content delivery in the face of more efficient and more equitable systems of distribution.

"Today, individuals are free to explore different ideas presented in books, music, and movies anonymously," EPIC said in its comments. "Existing DRM systems weaken this right by allowing copyright owners to monitor private consumption of content. In an attempt to secure content, many DRM systems require the user to identify and authenticate a right of access to the protected media ... These systems create records that enable profiling and target marketing of individuals' tastes by the private sector. Law enforcement can also gain access to these records by subpoena or by simply purchasing them."