Justin Marshall

The readings for the first week’s class allowed me to delve into a subject I have been debating for over a year. Without question, the current DRM system is flawed. As the Internet truly becomes more social, the gap between artist (or creator) and consumer is closing.

Unfortunately, I found that although some of the readings made some great points in support of removing (or modifying) restrictive DRM in new and creative ways, I felt that some of the alternatives presented were very weak and would not hold water. Take, for example, Landau et al.’s idea to implement a DRM management system for movies akin to the gaming industry by porting over the two main motivators of gaming: participation and interaction, and utilizing them in movie creation and sharing.

In her article, she claims “users increasingly expect to be able to interact with content that they access” (1).  Also, later in her work, she builds on this idea by offering the ability for consumers to create themselves inside a movie or remix a movie to have, an alternate ending.

As interesting as these ideas may seem, the assumption that people really want to “interact” or “participate” is quite inaccurate. More accurately, recent studies have shown the exact opposite. For years, social media professionals have quoted Pareto’s law (80/20) to define content consumers and content creators. But data shows that only 1% of online users actually create and maybe 10% actually might participate actively. The rest consume and are only interested in consumption.