As we see the ramp-up of anti-terror legislation in that most unlikely group of nations, the EU, as well as in the USA, organizations relying upon DRM to protect their assets need to look very carefully to see that new legislation does not pose a threat to their livelihoods.

Way back (well, OK, mid 1980’s) there was immense pressure coming from governments (actually it was the security services of governments, but some days they appear to have the same agenda) to ensure that encryption did not get into public use.

Yes.  For a long time you could only purchase cryptography products if you were a bank or got written approval from your government.  Phil Zimmerman, the man credited with the delivery of PGP (aka Phil’s Pretty Good Privacy), the very first publicly distributed encryption product was locked up by the Feds for a while in the 1990’s for exporting the code outside of the USA.  Even Ripley’s could not sell you a stranger tale.  And even today, encryption products are defined as ‘dual-use’ and may not be exported to some countries.

But right at the heart of any half-decent DRM service is an encryption service. 

So any effective DRM system uses serious grade encryption in order to make sure that the bad guys have a lot of trouble trying to steal information.  And that is good.

BUT – it also means that the authorities cannot read the information that DRM owners have protected.  And that is bad.  Because the good guys cannot be sure if you are good or bad.

Now that doesn’t bother your normal publisher because, after all, you are not publishing anything subversive, are you?  I mean, anyone with half a brain would know that you are trying to make a living by selling your intellectual property to the widest possible audience – the Internet.

But, of course, as the mantra goes, you could not possibly object to disclosing what you are doing to the ‘right people’ (this usually means people with a very specific agenda who have decided that they know what is best, and that you had better agree with them, at least according to Terry Pratchett). 

But given that the security authorities would argue that they need to know you are not selling bomb making recipes, or distributing hijacking methods and techniques, rather than the simple financial analyses and books on kitchen design that you actually deliver, how would anyone propose to make copies available to the security authorities?  And how would the PROVE these are the real copies.  And the security authorities of exactly and precisely which countries – please remember that a freedom fighter in your country may be seen as a terrorist in another!

In case you don’t think this is already a serious problem check out the strange habits of Google.  Outside of the USA you are routed to a specific local search engine depending upon where your ISP appears to be, geographically.  And this can have stunning effects upon what you are able to see, and what you cannot.  Our web site does not appear to be directly contactable from China, and we are only a humble DRM provider.

So as the pressures increase for disclosure of activity on, and information used on the Internet grow, as the authorities fight to gain more power to supervise and review what ordinary people do, ask yourself if DRM should fall inside the nanny state scheme or not.

After all, in the 1950’s and 60’s the songs of Tom Lehrer (MP3 DRM rather than our PDF variety, but, Hell, what’s the difference?) were banned in some countries as subversive, whilst today they are seen as nothing more than irony (except when they are not politically correct) – please see http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/national.htm and see how you feel.