Saturday, October 28, 2006

Government should use DRM sparingly

Government should use DRM sparingly
by ROBERT GELLMAN
Government Computing News, publication date:9 October 2006
"Comments of this type are usually public documents, and today they are often available on the Internet. What happens if a commentator used DRM to restrict access to the text?

A similar issue came up years ago when I worked for a House of Representatives subcommittee. Someone submitted testimony for a hearing with a prominent copyright notice. Did that mean that the testimony could not be distributed or printed? No one was quite sure, but we took the easy way out. We ignored the copyright notice. The submitter never objected, preferring to influence and not anger the committee. With a DRM-restricted document, however, subsequent dissemination of that testimony could have been difficult or impossible. "

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