EFF: Critique of "NAVSHP (FP6) DRM Requirements Report."

Cory Doctorow has written a critique of the EU "NAVSHP (FP6) DRM Requirements Report." for EFF. As usual he does a fairly decent job of presenting a point-by-point list of problems with the Report (which is an EU version of the Broadcast Flag concept but expanded and more powerful).

• The requirements fail to accommodate rights reserved to public under national copyright regimes.


• The requirements are flawed because they are based on an analogy with contract law. This is factually erroneous and legally misleading because it implies that consumers have voluntarily and consciously assented to changes in their rights and customary expected uses of digital media.


• The chief characterisitc of many DRM systems is that consumers are not advised of, nor able to learn in advance of, the restriction of uses of purchased digital media content or limitations in device use.


• The requirements are not neutral as between different business models for distribution of content- for instance, the requirements would preclude development and use of free and open source devices and would not permit use of works released by authors under Creative Commons licences.

Which is all fine and dandy, but as far as I am concerned, a major un-addressed problem with this Report and with most recent copyright expansion/extension proposals is:

• There has been no valid 3^rd party economic or financial analysis showing that any change is necessary let alone that the change will produce a net gain for the economy in question.