by Jonathan's Schwartz -
You've probably seen a bunch of the coverage from what we announced on Sunday evening around an open digital rights commons at the Progress and Freedom Foundation's Aspen Summit. I thought it'd be useful to put it all into context, and try to clarify some of the misimpressions.
Let me start with what's still viewed, by some, as controversial. I believe in intellectual property. Since Sunday, I've gotten a round of communications from those that believe the whole concept of IP is suspect, and digital rights management of any form is immoral (one writer used "evil"). I clearly don't share that view - you'll recall, Sun Microsystems is basically an intellectual property fountain - pour dollars in the top, some of the brightest minds go to work turning it into innovations, that are then translated into value by our customers and channels (and manufacturers).
With networks that connect everyone to everyone, the transmissability, and the value, of intellectual property is obviously on the rise - as is the need for IP owners to want to control their destiny. By IP owners, I mean everyone from an amateur photographer with a valuable snapshot or movie, to a studio owner with a blockbuster new film; from a software company delivering an operating system, to a fab owner with a new process innovation. It's all IP - bits on the internet - and it's all got value to someone (and it's all readily distributed over the internet).
Now, any number of challenges in the marketplace (from Supreme Court decisions to teenagers in movie theaters) suggest the need for an alternative to the systems and technologies being proposed to help intellectual property owners monetize their investments - what exists is ineffective, inefficient, or threatens to slow the Participation Age. So our view is that it's time for a change. That DRM is useful, but not in the draconian or dictatorial forms that have been discussed. DRM, to us, is simply a security model for intellectual property. And just as accessing your bank account should be protected by a security layer, so should accessing your data - as just another form of IP.
Our view is that an effective solution to the challenge of ensuring IP owners can manage their own security and access controls - and compensation, if that's what they seek - must make a few basic assumptions. Let's outline them:
Source: Always-On
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