gregh  2007-03-09 08:05  bcltsymposium  Computing  copyright  fair_use   

I'm sitting here at the BCLT symposium on Copyright, DRM Technology, and Consumer Protection. Tom Rubin from Microsoft, who recently made a name for himself by attacking Google, is now speaking, trying to draw analogies between physical protection and DRM.

For instance, he cites the account/payment requirement to read WSJ online content as a form of DRM. I suppose there's some validity to that comparison. However, it should be noted, once a user logs into the WSJ online, there are no further restrictions on the use of that content. There is copyright and user agreements, sure. But that's different. He suggested library circulation policies as an analogy, except that that's a limit to physical resources, and once users have physical access, fair use again comes into play.