IP Democracy: Google To Enter DRM Space

Mike at Techdirt and Om Malik pick up on a key detail buried in the WSJ’s story on Google’s rumored announcement of expanded video plans, which Om was the first to report.

Mike says:

[T]he really interesting point isn’t even being covered by most of the media. The Associated Press version and the Reuters version don’t even mention it, and the original Wall Street Journal version of the story buries it as the last sentence: “Google has developed its own digital-rights-management software to protect downloaded videos from piracy.” Google obviously felt it needed to do so to convince the big content companies to take part — but what it probably means is that we now have yet another incompatible copy protection system that is likely to lock people in (while also opening up new security holes). Hopefully, the actual details won’t be as bad, but hearing that the company has gone out and built a totally separate copy protection system (which, of course, will be broken quickly) makes it sound like Google’s taking a lesson from Apple in trying to exert extra control on a market.

Though Mike’s (and Om’s) skepticism is warranted in light of DRM’s history, it would be great to see Google come up with a creative approach to the gnarly problem of securing content, an arena plagued by complication, incompatibility, risk and unintended negative side effects. It seems unlikely, but we can hope.

Posted by Mitch Shapiro on January 5, 2006 11:22 PM to IP Democracy