Evil companies have given DRM a bad rap. Sony introduced us to rootkits which prevent us from ripping purchased CDs to play on our MP3 players. Apple iTunes won’t allow you to listen to your purchased music on any just computer. Encrypted and hidden files prevent us from making backup copies of our purchased DVDs.
DRM (Digital Rights Management) in its simplest form is good. Being able to assign all-inclusive use licenses to digital assets grants consumers the freedom to use purchased media and content the way they wish (within reason) without the fear of repercussions.
ESBN.ORG has developed a 19 digit unique identifier called an ESBN (Electronic Standard Book Number). This next generation ISBN-like unique identifier allows authors, publishers, and artists to generate a unique identifier for their digital asset - not just per title but per distributed copy of their digital asset. The ESBN is assigned to a person or company for fair use. This license can be tracked by the ESBN ID and even reassigned to someone else at a later time.
Imagine being able to legally sell or trade digital assets (such as music, e-books, or art) that you have purchased! You can do this with books, DVDs or CDs in the offline world. Why shouldn’t you be able to do the same in the online world? ESBN.ORG’s online numbering system may be the simple answer to this complicated problem. Good companies can restore DRM’s reputation.
