Doc on the death of a fledgling industry.
See also the discussion of ''digital rights management'' (an excellent candidate for oxymoron) on MediaAgora's blog. I especially value AKMA's comment:
...don’t I recall that one of the elements in the US’s rise to international prominence came precisely from the relative fluidity of its economic and social structures at a time when industrial capitalism made possible tremendously efficient new configurations of production, transportation, finance, and exploitation? How many people want to consign Euro-America to the status of has-been economic engine in order to perpetuate property, labor, investment and class institutions from an obsolescent social context?
Along with the economic strangulation of hyperbolic property law goes the choking of the voice of culture. A permissions format gives rise to the insanity documented here and here, among other places.
