MS Researchers say P2P will always beat DRM. According to The Register (File swap nets will win, DRM and lawyers lose, say MS researchers), a paper from a group of Microsoft researchers says that "darknet" file swapping will always be able to share pirated files, no matter what DRM technology copyright holders use. The paper goes through the various options like watermarking and explains why they all will fail. This true even for DRM built into the hardware. The paper concludes that the only way for corporations to compete is to make their services more convenient and full-featured. We have known this all along, but it is pretty amazing to hear some Microsoft people say it. This paper is just the thing to refer to when the next congressional bill comes up to make DRM manditory, just explain to them that even MS says it won't work. [infoAnarchy]
Which reminds me of that great Gene Kanquote, "The only way to make music that cannot be copied is to make music that cannot be heard. The only way to make movies that cannot be copied is to make movies that cannot be viewed."
I've been thinking about the following question: Presumably, the different communities that already exist in society differ in their potential to spawn new groups. What are the already existing communities where a group-forming system would be likely to get a good amount of traction? Here are my thoughts on that. I hope to elicit yours.
I'll start off with a few observations. First, it seems fairly clear from our previous discussions that some sort of label or description is needed for a group to come together. In the case of meetup.com, for instance, labels are pretty simple, having two facets: geographic location and a label referring to an interest (which can be pretty much anything - examples: "Radiohead", "homeschooling", "philosophy" ...) [group-forming: user blogs]
Topic maps in content management. Lars Marius Garshol recently e-mailed me, and pointed me his very interesting article on topic maps and content management. This talks about using an Integrated Topic Management System (ITMS) to provide a much more powerful management interface to the normal... [Column Two via Curiouser and curiouser!]
"Where's Melvil Dewey when we need him? The 19th-century creator of the Dewey decimal system has helped generations navigate libraries. If only he could do the same for one of the 21st century's burgeoning media: Web logs, the diary-like Web sites also known as blogs.
Blogs mostly catalog their creators' musings, with links to related sites, and as such they can be as hard to categorize as the people behind them. They're occasionally ferocious or funny, brilliant or banal -- and they all want your attention. But with more than half a million of these sites out there and new bloggers appearing all the time, how can you find the ones worth the commitment of a daily click?"
This journalist has done a terrific job. Great tips and great links in there - and YULBlog (a site for Montreal bloggers) gets a mention. But he forgot one of the most powerful ways to find weblogs you'll like. Here goes, a Seb's Open Research exclusive. Visit Google and type one or two words describing something or someone specific that really interests you; append the word "blog" or "weblog"; click " Search ".
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