DRM as a Smart Contract

[Ed Stone]

At 07:51 PM 7/7/02, you wrote:
>Nick Szabo created the idea of Smart Contracts several years ago.
>http://www.best.com/~szabo.  These would be self-enforcing agreements
>that were based on technology rather than laws.  It all sounded cool at
>the time.
>
>But isn't DRM a form of Smart Contract?  If I need a special viewer to
>download some content, and that viewer enforces the terms of the contract
>which allows me to do the download, that enforcement happens without
>any laws.  It is all handled by the technology.  It's a Smart Contract.
>
>It's interesting how ideas can sound good until you realize that they
>won't let you take other people's creative output without their consent.
>Maybe it's time for cypherpunks to put principle over greed.


If a large set of content providers adopt, as a cartel, a specific, single 
form of smart contract that requires the same specific form of hardware 
that they approve, and such adoption freezes out non-approved hardware from 
maintaining commercial scale, then questions of monopoly and collusion 
arise, and the question of greed seems to shine strongest on the cartel, in 
my view.

Regardless, to look at the entertainment industry and cypherpunks as a 
group, some might suspect the greater greed is not among the cypherpunks. 
The largest single cost was distribution. Digital communications can make 
that essentially free. When may we expect a price reduction that parallels 
the cost reduction? Or are they greedy?