Free Ride – How Technology Companies Are Killing The Culture Business

This new book titled Free Ride by Robert Levine a former features editor for Wired looks to be a must read for content creators. The book is currently available in the UK and goes on sale in the US onOctober 25th. Copyhype has a review of the book (here). What’s interesting and completely obvious once you start thinking about it, is this narrative about copyright being broken:

A conventional narrative has emerged of  the media and creative industries’ response to the internet and digital technology. Beginning around the mid-1990s, this story has been one of old against new: stodgy, corporate executives holding on to the past versus hip digital natives embracing the future. These technologies have rendered copyright law broken according to this story; existing media industries have failed to take advantage of these innovations, relying instead on using the law to prop up their dying business models. They have failed to adapt and sued those who have.

is nothing more than “a fight between the people who make money under the old system and the people who might make money in the new system.” Simple, right. As much as technology pioneers want us to believe that information wants to be free and that free is the “The Future of a Radical Price” the bottom line here is someone wants to make a buck that someone else is currently making.

Cool discussions in the comments section too: http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2011/08/26/ … -business/

A few days ago I read a thread here on how tumblr was built upon the DMCA loophole, like youtube.  Interesting.  Any more insights on all this?

Would photographers be better off with stronger DRM, like the kind of DRM which lets you, and only you, access the information in your bank account/paypal account?

Why is it that every effort is made to protect and secure and encrypt bank statements, while we are simultaneously told that it is impossible to protect a photograph, as "Information just wants to be free?"  After all, both are just digital information--both are just strings of 1s and 0s.

HJM Photography wrote:
Why is it that every effort is made to protect and secure and encrypt bank statements, while we are simultaneously told that it is impossible to protect a photograph, as "Information just wants to be free?"  After all, both are just digital information--both are just strings of 1s and 0s.

Because bank statements aren't published and photographs are.  Duh.  That should be obvious.

Monito -- Alan wrote:

Because bank statements aren't published and photographs are.  Duh.  That should be obvious.

yup.  it don't take a phd to figure that one out.

Monito -- Alan wrote:

Because bank statements aren't published and photographs are.  Duh.  That should be obvious.

Bank statements are published on your computer screen, just like photos are.

HJM Photography wrote:
Bank statements are published on your computer screen, just like photos are.

It's possible that English is not your first language, so let me help you.  The word "publish" has the same root as the word "public".  Photos posted to websites are "published" because they are made public.  Your bank statement is not published when it is transmitted to your screen for you to study your account privately.

Published is the opposite of private.

Monito -- Alan wrote:
It's possible that English is not your first language, so let me help you.  The word "publish" has the same root as the word "public".  Photos posted to websites are "published" because they are made public.  Your bank statement is not published when it is transmitted to your screen for you to study your account privately.

Published is the opposite of private.

So what you are saying is that anything that is published is made public.

What if someone elects to publish a paper for one thousand people and only one thousand people, encrypt it via DRM, and send it.  Is the paper published?

What if someone elects to publish a paper for ten people and only ten people, encrypt it via DRM, and send it.  Is the paper published?

What if someone elects to publish a paper for one people and only one person, encrypt it via DRM, and send it.  Is the paper published?

Many people publish their work in scientific journals which are only available via subscription, and thus are not available to the general public.  Would you contend that such papers aren't true publications as they are not made public?  lol!

Monito -- Alan wrote:
You have a fundamental confusion between publishing and distribution.  Restricted distribution of a paper is not a criterion of whether it is published or not.  Availability is the criterion.  If anyone can buy a subscription, then it is published.

A scientific paper that has been published is available to the general public in libraries and can be quoted from (selectively) according to the well-established priniciples of "fair use" under copyright law.  When the distribution is encrypted, it is only a means to protect the monetary value of the subscriptions.  It is not secret.

Your bank account is not available in libraries, nor is it published under any subscription service.  It is secret.

Do not confuse "printing" or "displaying" with "publishing".

Exactly.

So photographs could be shared just like your bank account--in secret, protected via DRM.

Imagine how much such technologies would help photographers to protect and profit form their works!

HJM Photography wrote:

Exactly.

So photographs could be shared just like your bank account--in secret, protected via DRM.

Imagine how much such technologies would help photographers to protect and profit form their works!

Your bank account information is useful if only you see it. Photographs are useless if only you see them.

Monito -- Alan wrote:
The security is only as secure as the end user is trustworthy.  Once a photo is displayed on a screen or decrypted for use by the end user for their purposes, the photo might be stolen by a hacker or by electronic reception of the radiated monitor signals or distributed (passed around) by the end user to other people not authorized to have it.

Encryption is not the solution.  Encryption only guards the transmission.

Encryption and DRM are the solution.

Artists/creators deserve to have their natural rights protected and be paid.

Monito -- Alan wrote:
DRM assumes that all the application programs that can receive and use the intellectual property play by the rules.  It depends on the end user playing by the rules too.  If you play your DRM controlled music through a high quality audio system into another computer to redigitize it, the DRM has been easily and trivially circumvented.

So it is for images.

Locks on banks depend on the people playing by the rules too.  If you pick a bank lock, the lock has been easily and trivially circumvented.

So it is for cars and homes.

And yet we haven't gotten rid of locks on cars and homes.  But only on digital creations and digital property.

HJM Photography wrote:

Locks on banks depend on the people playing by the rules too.  If you pick a bank lock, the lock has been easily and trivially circumvented.

So it is for cars and homes.

And yet we haven't gotten rid of locks on cars and homes.  But only on digital creations and digital property.

so you want a lock on your diary?

Monito -- Alan wrote:
Books were not locked.  Some teenager diaries were locked.

you read my mind.  i guess it wasn't locked.

HJM Photography wrote:
utilizing the DRM that could be easily implemented,

You make many naive assumptions in this thread, but the one quoted above is a whopper.

A physicist might think it is only a technology problem.  Others instantly realize that the sociological and infrastructure aspects are the real issue.  By "infrastructure" in this context, I mean the proliferation of software such as web browsers and image processors like Photoshop that people depend on and expect to use easily.

Monito -- Alan wrote:

You make many naive assumptions in this thread, but the one quoted above is a whopper.

Dude--you are a textbook example of a photographer proving my point.

"People, the bigger point here is that photographers should be afforded their natural rights to protect and profit from their creations, utilizing the DRM that could be easily implemented, ***if so many photographers had not been taught/trained to oppose it*** by the multi-billionaire masters of the cloud who want to use and profit off all your content, created via blood, sweat, and tears, for free."

HJM Photography wrote:
Dude

Please dude yourself.

I didn't want to post this publicly, but....

IF you go back to when computers and the internet were just being set-up at the same time jpg format was being coded. Code format to prevent downloading of jpg images was possible. (1981-86) ARPANET and CSNET were guided by a bunch of scientist not interested in protection of I.P. At some point, a Scientist, a known socialist and very controversial, got involved. I just can't remember his name.

(ARPNET/CSNET full access was limited to gov't access companies, primarily DOD Contractors as BETA testers).  The government's beef with the code was that individuals could exchange information secretly and was seen as a security pitfall. IMO, that didn't hold water. We were on the internet at that time, the same time companies realized the corporate espionage it was opening up and CSNET basically shut down because we (DOD Contractors) would not use it for confidentiality reasons.

Later, and IMO, after reading the papers of the beginning of the net/Internet Protocal and it's use as seen by "the code guys" and partly due to the University of Utah Graphics Department's input, it was an intentional move to thwart copyright and basically, force I.P. for "public use" so that anyone would and could make "cool graphics".  At that time, Copyright was never taught or mentioned in Collegiate Graphics Education, and I doubt is is today.

Can it be fixed...? I honestly don't know! I don't think so without changing the format.

Sad Penguin Photography wrote:
I think everyone is missing a very important point.

DRM doesn't work. It has never worked. It hasn't worked for music, movies, software, or any other digital property. and it will never work for photos either.

The failure of DRM is that it only takes one person to break. Once that happens, the content will be freely available to anyone that wants it. The only thing DRM does, is annoy legitimate consumers who can't figure out why their audible.com ebook won't play on their iphone, or why their DVR can't record the new movie release from their on demand system, or why they can't get their music off of their iTunes account and on to their new, non apple, mp3 player.

Do you think pirates have to deal with any of this? No, because they got their content without the DRM that some company spent all that money developing and some other company bought and slapped on their content.

What is really happening is content creators are making their goods less valuable to paying customers and wasting money on newer and newer systems that are never going to curb piracy.

The idea is that you should stop trying to beat pirates, it can't be done, and instead, spend you time and energy figuring out how to leverage your digital (infinite once they are created) resources, and use them to leverage scarce goods.

Sooooo, basically Netflix should just get rid of all DRM and Hollywood studios should give away all their $150-million budget films freely, because, after all, information just wants to be free and DRM does not--I repeat, DOES NOT work.

Martin Bielecki wrote:
It's by no means an easy debate to have and I really don't understand why some think it's so black and white. The technology really has changed some fundamental assumptions that we could always rely on that we need to rethink now.

We have always had certain rights as consumers of 'information' within our private domain. The boundaries between private and public were clear. A copy of a work in my private domain was a clearly distinct thing. The public publishing or use of that work was a separate thing altogether. Now we have technology that has bridged, if not completely erased, that hard boundary.

In the past I could allow private access to a work that I had 'purchased' to anyone I let into my private domain. Now my domain could rightly be said to include the electronic means I use to communicate in virtual space that is of my making. Some want the internet to be conceived of as an entirely public place, but most of us as individuals just don't accept that and fundamentally relate to our electronic spaces as a part of our private domains. So my twitter feed is not an entirely public thing as far as my use of it is concerned. The very way we call it "my" twitter or "my" tumblr hints at the confusion underlying this debate. What private domain rights do I still have? Which ones should have new reasonable limits set? How should we redefine the boundary between public publishing and private access? How do we reconcile that publishers want to simultaneously control the valuable exploitation of their works while 'sharing' them in a social space? What happens when the social space because the only commercial space we use? Is it reasonable to redefine everyone who uses the internet as a publisher when the actions underlying that definition are fundamentally of shared consumption in a domain conceived of as private in many ways?

Nice post!   Thanks!

Why, for instance, are not artists, photographers, and creators afforded an encrypted social network with DRM, where folks have to pay for access to view and enjoy their work? Why, instead, are we only given social networks who can sell all our private information to multi-billion-dollar corporations, and who can use our content freely to build their brand, without ever compensating the creator, other than "exposure?"  Does everyone here ony seek out jobs that grant you "exposure?"  Probably not.  But that's about all the social media offers--oftentimes with minimal or nonexistent credit even.

Instead of publishing platforms which afford marketplaces wherein creators can sell their work via DRM-protected channels, all we have are DMCA-loophole-business- models, where billionaires leverage the loopholes in the DMCA, building vast brands about the creators’ content–-the creator who never gets paid, while the billionaire's billions multiply.

Perhaps this is largely because the vast majority of creators would rather be seen as instamatic “hipsters” in their skinny jeans, than man up and stand for true art and enterprise. The billionaire companies regularly pay off the most vocal hipsters to rage against property rights and artist’s natural rights, and the hippest hipsters all know to dutifully follow the lead, as Newspapers shutter and professional photographers find it harder and harder to protect and profit from their work.

HJM Photography wrote:
Sooooo, basically Netflix should just get rid of all DRM and Hollywood studios should give away all their $150-million budget films freely, because, after all, information just wants to be free and DRM does not--I repeat, DOES NOT work.

Straw men are made of straw.

No where did I suggest that content creators should give away their goods.

The other problem with your position is that Hollywood and Netflix do not make money because they have DRM. They make it in spite of their DRM. Every movie is available for free the day it is released on dvd. Some, well before that. DRM is not doing anything. It is certainly not making people money.


I very clearly stated that since DRM does nothing to prevent piracy (this fact is not in dispute), and only succeeds at aggravating legitimate consumers, content creators should not be wasting their time and money on it. They are in fact, making the products they sell, less valuable to paying consumers, while pirates get anything they want without the headaches.

Why would you want to implement a system that does nothing to stop piracy and instead, costs you time and money and oh yeah, aggravates the people that want to give you their money?

And as for giving away stuff for free, that can work too. As long as you have a business model to back it up. If you don't believe me, consider that NIN's Ghost's I-IV was the highest selling MP3 on Amazon in 2008 even though the tracks were released for free, under a creative commons license and were freely available from almost any sharing site.

Trent Reznor has been a pioneer when it comes to business models in the digital age. Most would do well to look at some of his ideas.

Sad Penguin Photography wrote:

Straw men are made of straw.

No where did I suggest that content creators should give away their goods.

The other problem with your position is that Hollywood and Netflix do not make money because they have DRM. They make it in spite of their DRM. Every movie is available for free the day it is released on dvd. Some, well before that. DRM is not doing anything. It is certainly not making people money.


I very clearly stated that since DRM does nothing to prevent piracy (this fact is not in dispute), and only succeeds at aggravating legitimate consumers, content creators should not be wasting their time and money on it. They are in fact, making the products they sell, less valuable to paying consumers, while pirates get anything they want without the headaches.

Why would you want to implement a system that does nothing to stop piracy and instead, costs you time and money and oh yeah, aggravates the people that want to give you their money?

And as for giving away stuff for free, that can work too. As long as you have a business model to back it up. If you don't believe me, consider that NIN's Ghost's I-IV was the highest selling MP3 on Amazon in 2008 even though the tracks were released for free, under a creative commons license and were freely available from almost any sharing site.

Trent Reznor has been a pioneer when it comes to business models in the digital age. Most would do well to look at some of his ideas.

Dude--Trent Reznor, like Radiohead, came up through the traditional record label system and built a vast name/brand around that.

Name me some artists who did not come up through the dying label system, who gave and give it all away for free, who are rich and successful.

HJM Photography wrote:

Nice post!   Thanks!

Why, for instance, are not artists, photographers, and creators afforded an encrypted social network with DRM, where folks have to pay for access to view and enjoy their work? Why, instead, are we only given social networks who can sell all our private information to multi-billion-dollar corporations, and who can use our content freely to build their brand, without ever compensating the creator, other than "exposure?"  Does everyone here ony seek out jobs that grant you "exposure?"  Probably not.  But that's about all the social media offers--oftentimes with minimal or nonexistent credit even.

Instead of publishing platforms which afford marketplaces wherein creators can sell their work via DRM-protected channels, all we have are DMCA-loophole-business- models, where billionaires leverage the loopholes in the DMCA, building vast brands about the creators’ content–-the creator who never gets paid, while the billionaire's billions multiply.

Perhaps this is largely because the vast majority of creators would rather be seen as instamatic “hipsters” in their skinny jeans, than man up and stand for true art and enterprise. The billionaire companies regularly pay off the most vocal hipsters to rage against property rights and artist’s natural rights, and the hippest hipsters all know to dutifully follow the lead, as Newspapers shutter and professional photographers find it harder and harder to protect and profit from their work.

lose the rhetoric and content-empty phrases please?
if you have a point to make and/or a side to take you do it no justice.

Levine has been on and on and on about his pet peeves on the internet for decades.  This is nothing new.  Neither is the 'anonymous' post that was put up as if it were some secret.

universalized DRM and universalized micro payments have been publicly discussed on the net since at least 1996 or 1997.  The problem then and the problem today are the same. You simply cannot implement something that widespread with out hardware.  mandating hardware went out with the PC clones years before 1996.  Anyone can buy any hardware they want anywhere in the world and you don't have a world government to impose rules. DRM is easy.  mandatory DRM in open channels is essentially impossible. The netflix example is perfect.  It only works for Netflix users. I'm not a netflix user so it doesnt work for me.
Those who are truly interested in this issue should look up the history of it (and no secret posts). It's all there in public.

HJM Photography wrote:

Nice post!   Thanks!

Why, for instance, are not artists, photographers, and creators afforded an encrypted social network with DRM, where folks have to pay for access to view and enjoy their work? Why, instead, are we only given social networks who can sell all our private information to multi-billion-dollar corporations, and who can use our content freely to build their brand, without ever compensating the creator, other than "exposure?"  Does everyone here ony seek out jobs that grant you "exposure?"  Probably not.  But that's about all the social media offers--oftentimes with minimal or nonexistent credit even.

I think if you try to follow through on your idea of an encrypted network with DRM you'll find that you're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Publishers DON'T want to create a parallel network to control, they want to use the one that already exists but they are confounded by the reality that they can't change it into something they can control. They want to be here because it is THE SPACE. the only one. The cat's out of the bag now, there can be only one internet no matter how many ghettos we try to create within it. It's just too trivial to bridge information electronically. The future doesn't hold multiple parallel networks so much as one ubiquitous network. It will be both public but used in private ways. Both a commercial space as much as a social commons. And the issues will continue to become much more philosophical given that it will be a place for everything and everyone with fewer clear boundaries.

Martin Bielecki wrote:

I think if you try to follow through on your idea of an encrypted network with DRM you'll find that you're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Publishers DON'T want to create a parallel network to control, they want to use the one that already exists but they are confounded by the reality that they can't change it into something they can control. They want to be here because it is THE SPACE. the only one. The cat's out of the bag now, there can be only one internet no matter how many ghettos we try to create within it. It's just too trivial to bridge information electronically. The future doesn't hold multiple parallel networks so much as one ubiquitous network. It will be both public but used in private ways. Both a commercial space as much as a social commons. And the issues will continue to become much more philosophical given that it will be a place for everything and everyone with fewer clear boundaries.

you say that this space is the only space--the only one that is and that will ever be.

why?

what if someone creates a social media site with DRM wherein creators are afforded their natural rights to protect and profit from their content?

it would take off!

Sad Penguin Photography wrote:
I think everyone is missing a very important point.

DRM doesn't work. It has never worked. It hasn't worked for music, movies, software, or any other digital property. and it will never work for photos either.

The failure of DRM is that it only takes one person to break. Once that happens, the content will be freely available to anyone that wants it. The only thing DRM does, is annoy legitimate consumers who can't figure out why their audible.com ebook won't play on their iphone, or why their DVR can't record the new movie release from their on demand system, or why they can't get their music off of their iTunes account and on to their new, non apple, mp3 player.

Do you think pirates have to deal with any of this? No, because they got their content without the DRM that some company spent all that money developing and some other company bought and slapped on their content.

What is really happening is content creators are making their goods less valuable to paying customers and wasting money on newer and newer systems that are never going to curb piracy.

The idea is that you should stop trying to beat pirates, it can't be done, and instead, spend you time and energy figuring out how to leverage your digital (infinite once they are created) resources, and use them to leverage scarce goods.

We tell customers this all the time.

HJM Photography wrote:
Dude--Trent Reznor, like Radiohead, came up through the traditional record label system and built a vast name/brand around that.

Name me some artists who did not come up through the dying label system, who gave and give it all away for free, who are rich and successful.

O.k. Let's start really, really small. Adam Singer. Not even a full time musician. Just a hobbyist. After years of trying to sell his music through various sites and getting nowhere, he decide to release his music under a creative commons license and set up a page where people could easily download it for free.

With it now much easier for others to share his music, he started building a new following. As more people heard his music and his popularity grew. Fans created a profile page for his music on Last.fm, his music began showing up on popular music blogs and internet radio programs. He has even been offered commission work. You can read about it here.
http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/01/14/cre … tion-tool/

Let's go just a little bigger than that. Corey Smith.

Quoted from TechDirt

"In the earlier part of this decade, Smith was a high school teacher, playing open mic nights on weekends. But then, he started focusing on building his music career. He started playing numerous live shows, and really worked hard to connect with fans. He gave away all of his music for free off of his website, and used that to drive more fans to his shows. On top of that, he offered special $5 pre-sale tickets to many shows, which has a useful side effect: his biggest fans would convince many others to go as well, building up his fan base, and getting more people to go to more shows. He tried pulling his free music off of his website as an experiment, and saw that his sales on iTunes actually dropped when he did that. In 2008, mostly thanks to live shows, Corey was able to gross nearly $4 million. While giving his music away for free. Connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy worked wonders."

If you want more examples of small to mid level artists, you can look up Amanda Palmer and the business models she used after dropping from her record label.

If you really want to see some spectacular numbers, take a look at the creator of MineCraft. See how much money he is making as an independent software developer, and what he thinks of DRM and piracy. I will give you a hint, he doesn't worry about it. If you are not familiar with Notch and MineCraft, you can read about it here.

http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-is-theft … ntfreak%29

Sad Penguin Photography wrote:

O.k. Let's start really, really small. Adam Singer. Not even a full time musician. Just a hobbyist. After years of trying to sell his music through various sites and getting nowhere, he decide to release his music under a creative commons license and set up a page where people could easily download it for free.

With it now much easier for others to share his music, he started building a new following. As more people heard his music and his popularity grew. Fans created a profile page for his music on Last.fm, his music began showing up on popular music blogs and internet radio programs. He has even been offered commission work. You can read about it here.
http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/01/14/cre … tion-tool/

Let's go just a little bigger than that. Corey Smith.

Quoted from TechDirt

"In the earlier part of this decade, Smith was a high school teacher, playing open mic nights on weekends. But then, he started focusing on building his music career. He started playing numerous live shows, and really worked hard to connect with fans. He gave away all of his music for free off of his website, and used that to drive more fans to his shows. On top of that, he offered special $5 pre-sale tickets to many shows, which has a useful side effect: his biggest fans would convince many others to go as well, building up his fan base, and getting more people to go to more shows. He tried pulling his free music off of his website as an experiment, and saw that his sales on iTunes actually dropped when he did that. In 2008, mostly thanks to live shows, Corey was able to gross nearly $4 million. While giving his music away for free. Connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy worked wonders."

If you want more examples of small to mid level artists, you can look up Amanda Palmer and the business models she used after dropping from her record label.

If you really want to see some spectacular numbers, take a look at the creator of MineCraft. See how much money he is making as an independent software developer, and what he thinks of DRM and piracy. I will give you a hint, he doesn't worry about it. If you are not familiar with Notch and MineCraft, you can read about it here.

http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-is-theft … ntfreak%29

Check it out: http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-Gadge … 0307269647

Question: You argue the web isn’t living up to its initial promise. How has the internet transformed our lives for the worse?

Jaron Lanier: The problem is not inherent in the Internet or the Web. Deterioration only began around the turn of the century with the rise of so-called "Web 2.0" designs. These designs valued the information content of the web over individuals. It became fashionable to aggregate the expressions of people into dehumanized data. There are so many things wrong with this that it takes a whole book to summarize them. Here’s just one problem: It screws the middle class. Only the aggregator (like Google, for instance) gets rich, while the actual producers of content get poor. This is why newspapers are dying. It might sound like it is only a problem for creative people, like musicians or writers, but eventually it will be a problem for everyone. When robots can repair roads someday, will people have jobs programming those robots, or will the human programmers be so aggregated that they essentially work for free, like today’s recording musicians? Web 2.0 is a formula to kill the middle class and undo centuries of social progress.

Question: You say that we’ve devalued intellectual achievement. How?

Jaron Lanier: On one level, the Internet has become anti-intellectual because Web 2.0 collectivism has killed the individual voice. It is increasingly disheartening to write about any topic in depth these days, because people will only read what the first link from a search engine directs them to, and that will typically be the collective expression of the Wikipedia. Or, if the issue is contentious, people will congregate into partisan online bubbles in which their views are reinforced. I don’t think a collective voice can be effective for many topics, such as history--and neither can a partisan mob. Collectives have a power to distort history in a way that damages minority viewpoints and calcifies the art of interpretation. Only the quirkiness of considered individual expression can cut through the nonsense of mob--and that is the reason intellectual activity is important.

On another level, when someone does try to be expressive in a collective, Web 2.0 context, she must prioritize standing out from the crowd. To do anything else is to be invisible. Therefore, people become artificially caustic, flattering, or otherwise manipulative.

Web 2.0 adherents might respond to these objections by claiming that I have confused individual expression with intellectual achievement. This is where we find our greatest point of disagreement. I am amazed by the power of the collective to enthrall people to the point of blindness. Collectivists adore a computer operating system called LINUX, for instance, but it is really only one example of a descendant of a 1970s technology called UNIX. If it weren’t produced by a collective, there would be nothing remarkable about it at all.

Meanwhile, the truly remarkable designs that couldn’t have existed 30 years ago, like the iPhone, all come out of "closed" shops where individuals create something and polish it before it is released to the public. Collectivists confuse ideology with achievement.

HJM Photography wrote:
you say that this space is the only space--the only one that is and that will ever be.

why?

what if someone creates a social media site with DRM wherein creators are afforded their natural rights to protect and profit from their content?

it would take off!

except someone did already many times and it did not take off. It only worked within its own niche(s).  Creators being afforded their 'natural rights' is all fine and good but you need to have the other side of the equation.  people jump through hoops when they have to but have an annoying habit of routing around hoops just as the internet was designed to route around 'damage'.
Go ahead and start your own VPN. Or start  your own alternative or enhanced domain system and build DRM in.  Or go buy out one of the existing ones. It won't be an expensive venture because you won't need to build out a lot of infrastructure to meet the demand.  So it's easy to do. Go for it and let us know how it turns out.