Abstract
Some fundamental behaviours of the current (and foreseeable) global internet do not fit well with the requirements for successful digital rights management (DRM) and for control of access to IP rights-protected content. This has implications for longer term development of regulation in the digital domain. This paper considers some of these behaviours from a broad and unashamedly biased perspective. For the purposes of this paper, it is assumed that effective digital rights management depends on being able to constrain people not to use the network for direct, rights management-avoiding purposes. If we can assume total law-abiding communities, much of this discussion is pointless. The polemic probably lies in the area of suggesting that the value proposition for DRM is weak, and that such claims as are made in respect of ability to limit use are overstated.
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