[Geowanking] Re: GeoDRM

[Frank Warmerdam]

Josh at oklieb wrote:
> The point of the present GeoDRM work, however some might want to 
> demonize it on the basis of the term, is first and foremost to define a 
> system of rights information (metadata and protocols) which lets anyone 
> who uses geospatial intellectual property, communicate and be clear on 
> the terms of that use. This seems to me in the end a clearer and more 
> effective way of documenting unfairness in particular protection schemes 
> and moving toward more fair, less proprietary systems, than cracking 
> them and ranting about them, but that's just my preference.

Josh,

I'm pretty enthusiastic about a GeoDRM that aims to systematically, clearly
and unambiguously describe use-rights of geodata.

I'm less enthusiastic about DRM activities that are primarily focused on
building a software (and sometimes hardware) stack that enforces restrictions
against the will of the user, since the usual approach to achieving this is
to close and "lock" the software.

As I noted after your talk at FOSS4G, the case that really gets under my skin
is SENC (Secure Electronic Digital Charts) which seek to limit the data
to view-only on a single hardware instance, primarily to support a
particular revenue model.  As you can imagine actually enforcing this leads
to quite a closed system.

I think it is very helpful to bring forward use cases for GeoDRM that are
useful, while not ultimately requiring an extremely closed approach.
Otherwise those of us a bit predisposed against DRM will always project
our worse case scenarios onto the name. :-)

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org