EDUCAUSE Review Articles and DMCA

Educational institutions should be actively rethinking how they are accessing and using copyrighted visual arts images, and they should be exploring an approach that seeks to address copyright owners’ interests, as well as users’ needs, in an environment that encourages increased, shared access to these images for teaching and study.

"DRM technology represents an attempt to treat bits like atoms. "Watermarks" allow two otherwise identical collections of bits to be viewed as different objects. Biometric-based encryption can restrict access to only the current "holder" of the bits. Elaborate check-in/check-out schemes constrain a particular set of bits to "exist" in only one place at a time. Rather than rethinking their approach to copyright and developing new business models appropriate to the digital world, proponents of DRM technology are devoting their ingenuity and energy to trying to make bits behave like atoms in order to preserve the old ways. "