[Snappy!]

It's probably mentioned either here or elsewhere, but most would have to contend with the question: "What do you really buy, when you buy a CD, software, book, pair of jeans, a car, or a house?"

A house is a house. You put four walls up, set a roof on top, its a house. But I believe that if you start coping the designs of a house and build one replica of it, you will get sued by the architect or firm who may own the rights to the design of that particular house. Even if you buy a house, I think you will get sued. So buying a house entails owning the materials that constitute the house, but not owning the rights to the design of it.

In the case of a car, I believe its the same. Just because you buy a Camry does not mean that you are entitled to replicate the car. Now we know that its not that easy to replicate a house or a car compared to a CD (with its content), but assuming that you can, its still illegal, since buying a car merely entitles you to ownership of the materials and functionality that constitutes a car. It does not entitles you to the ownership of the design of the car as well. Otherwise, why should company A spend time designing their own car? Why don't they just go out and buy a ferrari and reverse engineer it and start churning out replicas?

But wait, that's what folks in some countries do, except its for "lesser" items. They do it with designer bags, with clothings etc. And on that, buying a pair of jeans does not entitle you to the design itself, only the material and functionality of it.

Extending this to books, just because it is relatively easier to copy books than clothings, cars or houses does not mean anything has changed. It still applies that ownership is limited to the materials and functionality of the item you own, not its design. In the case of books, the design is the story itself. Sure, you can learn alphabets from it and learn to read and write, thereby "copying" verbally and physically, but to copy out the story in verbatim, its not the same. Copying verbally, or reading it aloud, means the copy is innately transient and cease to exist thereafter. Hence it goes to apply that doing a unauthorised translation would be unlawful as well, since it duplicates the design, or the story or content in the case of a book.

The same goes for a piece of software or a CD, or DVD. The design in all these cases is not owned by the buyer; the buyer only own the material and functionality to the item.

I must further clarify that ownership of functionality should be known as rights to its usage.

Having laid these grounds, most content / design owners would not start suing people over personal use. eg, I believe software companies will not sue if an owner duplicates a software and uses the duplicate CD to do installation while keeping the original retail CD as a "master copy". The line is actually crossed the moment duplication occurs. And its up to the software company to decide to sue or not (assuming they know you duplicated). But they won't sue in this case since the subsequent usage does not infringe on their interest. And I believe in some EULA, this is stated as a right, that users have the right to make duplicate copies for backup purposes. Some companies go to the extent to allow users to install the software on 1 or 2 more machines as long as the user owns those machines and they are the sole user of the software. Other companies state that the user can install on another machine as long as both machines are not in use simultaneously.

I believe most of these would also apply to CD and DVDs with audio or video content.
And this is where DRM comes in.

In the case of a house, car or bag or clothing, it is not a trivial matter to duplicate its material, much less its design. This inherently prevents us from churning out houses, cars and other items for our friends and families. This is DRM by physical material. In the electronic world, its a different ball game.

Analog tapes can be copied with varying fidelity in quality. But enter the digital realm, and suddenly we say hello to happy cloning. Because the copies are verbatim and the process of copy is not trivial, the traditional DRM by physical material is suddenly gone. Without this in place, who is to say that we will not copy our software and start distributing it because we feel its too pricy? Cars are pricy. Designer bags are pricy. But we don't go around duplicating cars or bags or houses because duplication requires too much efforts. And that's also why fake LV bags are available, because the effort to duplicate is low compared with the returns.

Digital Rights Management hence comes in to replace the DRM by physical material. Of cos we all know that its there to stop ppl from duplicating content. Understanding the comparison with how "DRM" is enforced for more brick-and-mortar items may help us better understand why DRM itself is here.

However, the pertinent question may become "Isn't it great that the digital world allows us to duplicate things at minimal cost? Why stem it?". Sure. Why stem it? Why not duplicate all the contents and share the love around? Well, in some parts of the world, that's called communism. Ok, don't laugh. But seriously think for awhile. It is, isn't it? Why, if digital duplication worked in the real world with houses and cars, communism would not have collapsed if you asked me. For that matter, if it worked, then capitalism itself may become irrelevant as well (which may not be a bad thing altogether).

If it were possible, then we could all open source and start fabbing cars and houses and all the stuffs that we all need. But wait, even if digital duplication works in the physical world, you still need the material to create the copy. Ok, so then we may need to really start creating new material items to form the copies.

But unfortunately, digital copying only works in the digital realm. And the truth is, if copying and giving or selling to others is not outlawed, what is the impetus for anyone to buy something they already own? Albeit a copy.