Hollywood vs the Future

This article (rather foolishly) declares the content wars drawing to a close because a technology company called SmartRight has agreed to provide technology that provides total end-to-end encryption for copyright technology, regional encoding, digital watermarks, and every other content control gizmo Hollywood could want. The key to all of this is whether people can put up open content if they want, and if they can (which I believe surely will happen) then every constraint Hollywood puts on its stuff is just one more reason to avoid it. And that's just fine by me.

I'm organizing a panel at the U Chicago GSB technology conference on DRM, and I want panelists to explore how DRM media will compete and cooperate with open media.