[Air-L] Cambridge Paper: DRM makes pirates out of us all

[Richard Forno]

6286. Technological accommodation of conflicts between freedom of  
expression and DRM: the first empirical assessment

Patricia Akester (PhD) was awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Research  
Fellowship (in association with matched funding from Emmanuel College,  
University of Cambridge) to undertake a project looking at the impact  
of technological measures on the ability of users to take advantage of  
the statutory exceptions to copyright. When technological measures  
were under consideration in the mid 1990s two stark scenarios  
presented themselves: on the one hand, an ideal world where copyright  
owners could use DRM to make their works available under a host of  
different conditions in a way that responded to the diversity of  
consumer demand; on the other, a more bleak environment where all  
users of copyright material (and much non-copyright material) would be  
forced to obtain permission and pay to access material that previously  
would have been available to all. In the face of these two extreme  
visions, the European legislature developed a compromise position,  
embodied notoriously in Article 6(4) of the Information Society  
Directive. The legislature appeared to be hoping that rightholders  
would voluntarily make material within certain specified exceptions  
available to users. Patricia Akester examines how these issues are  
working out in practice. Based on a series of interviews with key  
organisations and individuals, involved in the use of copyright  
material and the development and deployment of DRM, she provides a  
sober assessment of the current state of affairs.

http://www.law.cam.ac.uk/faculty-resources/download/technological-accommodation-of-conflicts-between-freedom-of-expression-and-drm-the-first-empirical-assessment/6286/pdf