Inside AP’s New News DRM System
There has been some talk about the Associated Press’ new system, called hNews for some reason, for protecting its precious copywritten materials from bloggers, pirates, and pederasts. The system will include a DRM system that will make sure you can’t cut and paste data from a browser to a blog post, thereby ensuring that no one can steal the AP’s valuable, value-added content. As I recall similar systems were implemented by websites back in the days of AOL. They didn’t work because you could just view the source code or, interestingly enough, take a screen shot.
The system works by putting something into a digital container and then sending to Google or whatever. This same system, as you recall, has prevented the rise of piracy in the music and movie arenas and must be applied to the written word before the Internet fails and we all resort to getting our news from “prophets” who will line major thoroughfares opining on things they believe happened, whether or not they are true. In short, we’ll be stuck with cable news pundits.