“The Implications of Digital Rights Management for Privacy and Freedom of Expression” 2:1 (2004) Information, Communication and Ethics in Society 87-94 (co-authored in equal proportion with Jane Bailey).
This article was co-authored by my good friend and colleague Jane Bailey , a law professor at the University of Ottawa. We examine some of the broader social consequences of enabling digital rights management (DRM), focusing particularly on two central features of DRM: (i) its surveillance function and (ii) its ability to unbundle copyrights into discrete and custom-made products. We conclude that a promulgation of the current use of digital rights management has the potential to transform the basis of control for intellectual creations from various public powers to the invisible hands of private control. We also try to show that the current DRM strategy has the potential to seriously undermine our fundamental public commitments to personal privacy and freedom of expression. This article stems from a presentation that we made ETHICOMP 2004 in Syros, Greece in 2004. Among other things, the food there was truly incredible!
