Digital Rights Management For Privacy?

from the don't-think-so... dept

Last week, we trashed the latest push to create a copy protection scheme for mobile phones, pointing out that it won't do anything to help mobile phone users who are much more interested in creating their own content than downloading some content to their phones. However, Dana Blankenhorn has written up a piece suggesting that there is a good side to DRM. Since it's true that it's the end users create their own content, DRM technology can be used to protect an individual's privacy. In other words, you can keep vital private information about yourself on your mobile phone, and then decide who to share it with. Ernest Miller, however, quickly responds pointing out why such a plan will never work. First of all, no one is designing DRM for use in this manner. It's being designed for big content creators to wrap their content in copy protection to be bought. More importantly, though, DRM won't actually work to protect privacy. As Miller's piece points out, whether or not your information is kept private is a function of your ability to negotiate with those who have access to the info - and not any technological hurdles. Besides, while you may be able to protect one instance of a copy of the information, the information itself cannot be protected. Once someone has it, they are always going to be able to do what they want with it.