Webcast - The Technology of Copyright

Karen Coyle is the speaker for this one, and I think this copyright webcast is better than the first one I posted about. Her explanation of how DRM works is very clear, and she makes a good case for why various things like DRM and trusted systems (and more) are scary for libraries and scary for consumers in general. One of my favorite bits (also one of the scarier bits) is when she talks about talking to one of the developers for a DRM (I think that's what they were creating) and asking this person about whether it will be possible to archive the protected materials. The person's response was something like, "Well, we'll be keeping a copy of it. It should be good for five years!", said as though this was a good thing. As librarians, we sometimes forget that it is often only librarians who think in terms of 50+ years when dealing with various materials, whether they be print books, digital files, CDs, etc.