DRM is impacting more and more people every day, and there are some interesting discussions emerging regarding DRM in the context of protecting IP. Most people who're involved high-tech businesses understand the value of IP; and understand very well the many and varied motivations of those that seek to protect their IP. My issue with DRM - where the term is used to imply an encoding of a digital asset to restrict its use - is that it doesn't work. It's technically impossible for it to work. Ever. That kind of technology is not going to help people protect their IP. Ever.

So, why all the investment in DRM? It's truly a red herring. The answer is obvious: the current key players (movie companies, music companies) don't really understand how the Internet is changing (and will contrinue to change) their business models. They sorta, kinda understand that it doesn't work, because they're obsessed with trying to plug the analogue hole. But even knowing that, they still ask questions like, "So how many times should people by allowed to play a movie they just bought?" They clearly have some way to go in there thinking.

Now, all this is not to say open DRM security models for user authentication are a bad idea. Given that DRM, in some form, is probably here to stay, I'd say this kind of thing is a sensible way to go. Indeed, if it's done right, there's no reason why DRM can't be a good thing. But what a pity so many people are wasting so much time thinking about how to protect their content in ways that can never work. I call the kind of behaviour we're seeing with DRM "focussing on failure." It's not a good thing - it paralyses people and businesses. Far better to focus on success. In the context of the DRM debate, focussing on success means people spending more time thinking about how to get their createive works out to the largest possible, most profitable markets in the most timely manner. What the media companies need to understand is that the largets, most profitable markets of the future, don't look the same as they do today.