[kFW] Richard Stallman on DRM/Kendra - dilemma...

[Daniel Harris <daniel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi there All,

I need some help on this one. Richard Stallman (founder of the GNU Project) 
receives kNews and sent me this (he's given me permission to reproduce for 
purposes of formulating a response)...

>Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2001 11:21:43 -0600 (MDT)
>From: Richard Stallman <rms@xxxxxxx>
>
>For those of us who work on free software, Digital Restrictions
>Management is the enemy.  Its goal is an evil one, the subjugation of
>the general public by the owners of information.  And in addition, it
>has the effect of prohibiting free software outright.  For instance, a
>free program to read a DVD was censored in the US under the DMCA.
>
>If support for Digital Restrictions Management is an important part of
>Kendra, you will exclude our community from supporting Kendra.

And herein lies the dilemma... Regardless of our personal feelings towards 
DRM we are building an open platform for content delivery facilitating 
revenue generation. The Kendra system has to be all inclusive if we are to 
get all content owners and other content related industries on board. Some 
of these content owners may want to use DRM. As I have said before we 
should not stand in between the consumer and the content owner. If the 
restrictions placed on the consumer are too great they will find ways of 
getting around it and, most likely, the content owner will loose out 
altogether. The content owner will then have to rethink their ways.

If the Kendra system were to ignore DRM completely then we would probably 
not be able to gain involvement from many parts of the content industry.

This is not to say that we have to choose between one or the other: between 
the free software community or the DRM community. I refuse to choose! I 
want both to support Kendra! We have to reconcile. We have to do this to 
enable convergence.

How do we reconcile? Or how do we enable DRM without supporting it? We've 
got to use our brains on this one. So, thoughts please.

Cheers Daniel