Digital Rights Management

DRMs, CIOs, CSSs, AACs--oh, the many acronyms of information protection.

As our economy becomes more information based, I often wonder whether information will ever become a commodity. Being a recent graduate that was not being paid for most of his work anyway--it's a little hard to transition to corporate confidentiality (if you would like to view the actionscript source code of my interactive portfolio, goto my website and email me). In some interviews, the employers can't even show me, the prospective employee, what they create. Your ideas are your money.

In the media marketing industry, it seems that it's up to the client or distributor to protect content. We squabble over clients and create (illustrate, film, code, etc.) media that is easily duplicated--and often wouldn't mind our creations being duplicated (like the ads we create). This will change as the ad-agencies diversify into full-service firms. More proprietary information will be protected.

For further reading:
Wikipedia article on DRM
(maybe linking to a for-fee site, like Britannica would have been more appropriate. . .)


--Stephen
www.smjdesign.com