Dr Ian Brown has a good dig at a load of copyright lawyers:
What I found interesting was that (a) a room full of copyright lawyers had very little idea of the very many technical problems with TPMs and (b) those that did were busy thinking up new crackpot schemes to "protect" their clients' 20th-century business models.
The current favourite seems to be that ISPs should be forced to monitor all exchanges of data and charge customers when a copyright work is spotted. When I asked how the spread of encryption could possibly be compatible with this scheme, they airily replied that only paedophiles use that technology and we would all be better off if it was banned. They obviously don't know that the US government already tried extremely hard to do this over about 25 years, and failed.
Given the ever-increasing focus on securing critical national infrastructures, anyone who hopes that governments will go down that road again is living in fantasy land. To think that companies are being charged several hundred pounds an hour for this type of advice…
I've got a lot of time for Ian Brown, who knows what he is talking about. I suspect that most of the lawyers know more than they let on. Their job is to represent their clients interests, not necessarily help create the new commercial paradigm for the creative content industries (music, film, media etc).
I can imagine that lawyers acting for ISPs would be more than happy to draft the sort of letters that Tiscali sent to the BPIearlier this year. The idea that ISPs can, or even should, "police" content is absurd. DRM (digital rights management) is fraught with problems, and all the creative industries appear to be struggling to come to terms with the issues. Blaming the lawyers though is the easy option. Coming up with working solutions to the problems seems to be a lot, lot harder.
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