The Future of DRM - Flexibility

I was just over at Slashdot, reading the usual bitching and moaning about DRM, this time about something that may or may not be going on with Amazon's Kindle. The hubbub revolves around the text-to-speech function of the Kindle, and Amazon's ability to disable it on a book-by-book basis.

The summary speculates

But what no one at Amazon will discuss is what other flags are lurking in the Kindle format: is there a "read only once" flag? A "no turning the pages backwards" flag?"

Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. The only problem I have with this is that it isn't transparent enough. If I can pay less for something that I will only read once, a "read once" flag seems like a pretty good idea.

To me, that's the crux of it. I don't think I really differ from Joe Average in this regard. If I know what I am buying, and I think it is a good deal, then I'll buy it. Once I've bought it, the rules shouldn't be changed - if I purchase a Kindle book with any reason to believe that text to speech will work for that title, then it should work.

As awareness of DRM and the consequences increases, people will simply adjust their expectations, and their consumption patterns will follow. iTunes showed this quite well. Apple has started providing non-protected music, but they haven't tried offering protected music at very reduced rates, either. Tracks for 10 cents, or even free? Why not?

Assuming that the media companies got their heads out of their collective asses (ha!), what would people pay with what kind of restrictions? $1 for unprotected, reasonable quality is the standard right now. How about five cents for a high quality track bound to one device? Fifty cents for a track you can play on one device at a time (transfer the license)? Hell, if I could buy a player pre-loaded with my music, built from a list of licenses I own, that's a value-add.

It is to the media companies' detriment that they are handling this so poorly, and creating so many bad experiences for the early adopters who might not have otherwise cared. They're further shooting themselves in as many feet as they have by worrying too much about whether DRM can be broken. They should be watching people who go through the trouble of hacking it, and seeing what is done with it. That's free marketing research, tons of it. Take those ideas, package them up in an easy-to-use package, and sell it to everyone else.

From an IT perspective, oh yea it's coming (already here, in some places). Count on it. I've spent too much of my life putting permissions on files to believe that DRM won't be eventually be pervasive. I wouldn't be surprised if that bled over into the consumer market: "Your email can't be forwarded" is pretty compelling.

The timeline for all of this? Beats me. I'm just a goon.