Contrary to the belief of many, I think there is no reason to assume that DRM can never work. I have collected several examples in previous posts: Nintendo game boy cartridges, online games (for example Half-Life 2) and mobile phones.
Now I have another possible candidate.
Several weeks ago, I decided to declare my website a Google-free zone and edited my "robots.txt" file accordingly.
Today I discovered some older posts about Google's massive copyright violations at the Unofficial Google Blog here ("Looming Copyright Catastrophe for Google", a post title with a definitely pleasant ring to my ears) and at Search Engine Watch here ("Search Engines Already Infringe").
Thinking a bit about these posts, I came up with robots.txt as a candidate for working DRM.
If I tell Google with robots.txt that they are supposed to desist from copying my content, I am using a technological measure under the definition of DRM in Article 6 Paragraph 3 of the 2001 Copyright Directive.
It is clearly designed to prevent acts of copying by Google not authorised by me. It is also "effective", since it achieves its object of keeping Google from copying my pages.
The other point is that I probably need to stop shutting out Google with this DRM measure.
In my opinion, Google has no right in the first place to copy the whole web.
That point of view however is weakened by the fact that Google can point to the effective DRM measure of editing "robots.txt". So by accepting their way of doing business (steal everything freely and point to the opt-out DRM solution as a substitute for non-existing licenses if someone complains), I am actually helping their cause. Which is of course the last thing I want to do.
I am not sure how should decide that question.
Posted by Karl-Friedrich Lenz at June 30, 2005 09:39 PM