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19 October 2006

Data Lock Down - GEO DRM

DRM (Digital Rights Managment) of Geographic Data

What is GEO DRM (in simple terms)?
Similar to buying property and renting a property and having access to the key.
GeoDRM is the latter when the contract has ended over time the key is removed.

Debate: Is it worth locking down the digital data with DRM?

Ordnance Survey think it is.
"In my mind the GeoDRM work we are supporting as this point is more about the creation of standards based ways of defining, expressing and distributing the rights to access geospatial data - recognising the point that both commercial and non-commercial users may want to manage how their content is used." ED Parsons CTO Ordnance Survey


Zcologia thinks not
"Despite all the UML and fancy power-pointing, the GeoDRM business model is straight out of the 19th century. GeoDRM proponents do not see (or will not share) a way to make money other than by leasing virtual property"

GeoDRM Standards
http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/geodrmwg

mapperz thoughts?
remember Sony and DRM? (enough said)

Isn't it hard enough to get third party software to convert neutral data formats into useable formats adding DRM will only force more away from using geographic data and less revenue for Ordnance Survey.
Why not use winzip with 128-bit encryption with a strong password....

1 Comments:

At Thursday, October 19, 2006 5:31:00 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The trouble with the term DRM is that it is so emotive, as this point we are looking at how rights are expressed and transferred... nobody is taking about encryption or actual physical protection at this point.

For example as data creator I can give you a user access to my street centreline database on London, for non commercial use for the next 12 months after which time the data needed to be refreshed.

Expressing those rights is the part of the DRM problem we are interested in !

 

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