Studios make movies to make money; publishers publish books to make money; music companies produce cds to make money – content producers want to exploit their content to make money. That’s why they seek strictly to enforce their copyright in movies, books, music, and so on. It’s how they make their money. And they adopt measures to protect this content from piracy. So, they objected to the photocopier, and to double-tape decks, even though a photocopy or copied tape is rarely as good as the original. Now, however, the benefits of digital content are threatened by the ease of copying digital content without loss of quality. And the content producers, in particular the movie and music companies, are (controversially) trying to use technology to prevent such copying and (even more controversially) to use the law to support (and enforce) such anti-copying technology. They have failed to understand why it’s getting such a bad press, and they have become locked into a mindset that seeks to corall and control their content. And they can’t see that much of this anti-copying technology makes life very difficult indeed for their customers.

The challenge for these companies is to find a way to co-exist with both the advantages and disadvantages of digital content, without losing customers.…

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