Last night's opening Aspen Summit keynote was delivered by Sun Microsystems president and COO Jonathan Schwartz.
He didn't give the typical "welcome-to-Aspen-I-hope-your-conference-is-fruitful" spiel. Instead, he dived right into the DRM debate -- one of the more contentious issues that has faced the assembled masses ever since Napster popped onto the scene in 1999.
Schwartz challenged the audience of executives, government affairs folks and lawyers from the content, distribution and tech industries to do two things:
1) Recognize the fact that we are moving from the Information Age -- where content is simply delivered to be used by consumers -- to the Participation Age -- where the average consumer is also likely to be a producer of content. This means that suggestions that the tech, distribution and content industies work together to find solutions that create fair compensation without losing fair use is right -- but incomplete. The millions of amateur contributers of content on the Internet should have a say, too.
2) To give those driving the Participation Age a chance to contribute to finding a solution to the seemingly intractable DRM battles, Schwartz invited the attendees and anyone interested to get involved with the newly launched Open Media Commons. Essentially, the Commons will work to find an open-source, royalty free means DRM standard that allows both film studios and amateur photographers, for example, to be in control of their copyright. The standard will focus on authenticating individuals -- not creating DRM toll-booths on multiple devices. See Sun's press release here. And coverage here, here and here.
During the Q&A session, Schwartz suggested that the government has a role to play in ensuring that standards benefit the economy and are fair for all constituencies. (He used the analogy of goverment involvement creating standards for pre-Civil War railroad build-outs). Schwartz's wording was vague enough for the free-marketers in the room (nearly everyone) to get all knee-jerky and worry that Schrwartz was recommending that the government impose mandates for a standard. Au contraire. We talked to the Sun folks (they are a client) and Schwartz was merely saying that the economic impact of the issue is big enough that govermment likely has a role in encouraging the private standards setting process just as they have with the successful Liberty Alliance and in efforts to create standards for the digitizing of health records. Declan McCullagh of CNET writes about this back and forth here.
Regardless, Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman likes the Open Media Commons concept and told Aspen Summit attendees today that (roughly):
"We are encouraged by Sun’s approach and look forward to working with Sun to determine if the Open Commons is a way to allow music copyright holders to set their own parameters for compensation."
I wonder how you got so good. This is really a fascinating blog, lots of stuff that I can Get into. One thing I just want to say is that your Blog is so perfect!
Posted by: tods outlet | August 10, 2012 at 12:23 AM