Very interesting thought. As far I am concerned the difference lies in the fact that my photos are only mine and I can do what I want with them unlike DRM infested music which I don't have to full rights to even when I purchase them.

When I share a pic online and restrict it to be viewed by only my friends, I am doing this because *I own* those pics and they are my property and I haven't been charging money from people to view them.

On the other hand, when I buy music from itunes, I pay for it and expect that I should be able to do whatever I want with the music files.

Anil —

I'm wondering if the difference isn't in the names. DRM is Digital Rights Management, whereas access to content is just that: access. I can control whether you can see my photos on Facebook by which Friends List I put you in, but I can't control what you do with the photo while you're there or where you choose to view it or whether you choose to share it.

DRM, on the other hand, is about controlling the rights you have to that content, generally related to the things Creative Commons provides rules for: sharing, building commercial properties on the original, reselling, etc. Apple's FairPlay DRM controls what you're allowed to do with the music you have access to (by virtue of having purchased it), by limiting the number of times you can burn the same playlist to CD, the way you can load it onto iPods, or the amount of time you have to view rented movies.

There might also be something to the fact that you can revoke access at any time for any reason — i.e.: there's no contract or terms of use governing your behaviour. Although some DRM revokes access (rented movies in iTunes disappear after a certain period of time, play once DVDs auto-erase after playing), it is always on a pre-defined basis.

I suppose you could look at it from the perspective that access is only one of the rights typically included in DRM and therefore a subset. So your question could be answered that they aren't necessarily different per se, but rather that they occupy the same side of the coin as things like copyright, the DCMA, and even usernames and passwords and biometrics.

Not sure if that really answered your very thought provoking question :)

— Jay
http://jaygoldman.com
http://twitter.com/jaygoldman

I agree. To me, the crucial difference is that your photos on Flickr and Facebook are your property that others are merely observing. They haven't paid you to become an owner.

Basically, the files and information on social networking sites are legally like streaming TV and radio. People who enjoy that media do so for free in exchange for your complete control over it.

As others have said - it's because you're sharing your photos for free.

If I downloaded a song for free, I probably wouldn't care what restrictions were placed on it, because it cost me nothing.

However I would be very annoyed if I bought a print from an artist, and then was only allowed to display it at the house I occupied at the time; it couldn't come with me if I moved.

The difference between access control and DRM is that with access control the owner of the computer is deciding who has access to the data, whereas with DRM the owner of the computer is being surprised with 3rd party restrictions on data they thought was theirs. The problem with DRM is the restrictions it places on people on their own computers; if I send a link to a picture of you that is removed from public view via rules enforced by the server, that is one thing; if I send a file that is hidden by rules enforced by an OS or program that are changed after the fact, that is DRM and relies on the existence of a user without full control of his or her own computer to work.

my approach is sort of mechanical but both systems require an investment/TCO which is either monetary or time with social networks relating to the latter (though they can be reciprocal). a naively yet rational way of thinking would implicate that once you don't take the time to foster a relationship there should be no reason left to (passively) participate in another person's life. to lead this over to real-life: taking from someone after years of absence almost always implies some sort of hypocrisy at the beginning which could be described as an evil "on-demand mentality", adding a third dimension to this comparison. that being said, i wouldn't regard the current approach of facebook et al. a flawed one per se.
corporate DRM is simply a protracted lock-in relationship with a competitive background, social DRM is a highly emotional process with memories and experiences that fade just like that movie you rented on itunes.

The difference is in the payment, unless you're paying for access to your friends' profiles.

The difference between access control in social networks and DRM on media content is that DRM aims at controlling not only the access to the content but also the usage of the content (can they use it on this device, for how long or how many times, at what definition or bit rate, can they print it, record it, convert it, etc...). To achieve this DRM has to modify the original content in order to control all possible usage, even by authorized users. In fact with DRM no authorized user has access to the original content !

So DRM is more about controlling how authorized users will use the content, while access control in social networks is purely about leaving you in control of who can access your content: but when you grant access you have no control on what they do with it.

Antoine.
-- http://twitter.com/antoine_bertier

Hi Anil,

I've posted my thoughts in my blog:

http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/why-social-drm-is-not-corporate-drm

As lots of people have already said, the difference is in the payment.

That being said, there's another fundamental error in your reasoning and it's easiest seen in this statement: "if somebody ceases to be my friend, I can change their status and they no longer have access to that information"; because if the former-friend has copied the information before you revoked the access to the original, there's no way you can revoke former-friends' access to that copy.

This is what happens when you buy digital music; you get a copy of the original.

DRM tries to reach over that barrier, and that is why it irks most people so: it upsets the ancient definition of "This is mine and that is yours".

We experience and use Flickr (et al) as a means of personal expression and social interaction, so access control in that setting is a fairly straightforward extension of our need for privacy. Making choices about privacy in the case of social networking is pretty much immediately cognate with how we operate IRL.

DRM, on the other hand, operates on the assumption that the transmission of culture is primarily a matter of commerce and profit. Which flies in the face of millennia of humans reshaping and swapping stories and songs.

Excellent thought and leads to a conclusion of mine that if the social networks let us sell our information. We'd be more inclined to have a commercial perspective to our social media relationships.

I'll toss another vote into Mrten's comment that "DRM tries to reach over that barrier". I have a few things that I'll show to one group of friends and not another, but I do so trusting the judgment and discretion of those friends.

If the music industry had to do this, my guess is that we'd see a lot more classical and jazz and a lot less pandering to gangsta thugs.

And if the music industry explained this, and treated us as friends rather than enemies, we'd also be building a society in which attitudes which respected the efforts and property of another were fostered, rather than uncool barriers to be torn down.

I'm also going to interject this very rudimentary thought about these comparisons.

As a content creator on your chosen networks you have been given the right to choose how much you want to restrict the content. You set your limits.

Audio video content provided and purchased on networks such as iTunes is provided by the labels and/or content creators (which may not be one and the same). By agreeing to have the content distributed in such a network, the content creator (or owner or supplier) has allowed the delivery network to place restrictions on that content to the end user e.g. DRM. If the content creator does not want the DRM placed on the content (until recently) they would simply have to choose not to use iTunes or a similar service as the delivery mechanism. Often, however, the content creator (musician, songwriter, video producer, etc.) has not control over the delivery of the product once it has been created and distribution channels take over.

Ultimately, the content creators or the distribution companies (labels) can ask that the content be removed from the DRM restrictions and therefore offer it as such to end users. With some delivery outlets (such as iTunes or similar companies) they may not be able to continue the relationship and may have to look at other channels if they want DRM free options.

So back to the rudiments here. You choose how you want your content delivered. They choose how they want their content delivered. It begins at the source and ends with the consumer. DRM is just one avenue for how the consumer may receive said content and the restrictions placed upon it.

It seems like you are asking "what is the difference between the social and commercial spheres of our lives, really?"

But I'll bite on an important technological difference. DRM prevents you from doing what you want with the data AS YOU USE IT. If social neworks used DRM, that means that people would not be allowed to download Flickr pictures to their own harddrives, save local copies of protected blogposts, or take screenshots of the same.

Social networks use social relationships to negotiate access, but do not place a horrible invasive technical burden on you once you have access.

The horrifically flawed idea that the technical burden could be both effective and reasonable is the main fault with DRM. Social networks prevent you from initially seeing things. DRM tries to affect what you can do with things after you've seen them. One is pretty easy, and the other is almost impossible.

A lot of commenters have talked about the distinction being between access and re-use, but that doesn't feel right to me. I think privacy is the bigger issue: the user wanting to keep control of the perception of themselves via controlling access to that information.

Record labels are not trying to keep the content of songs private. It's not like the labels would be embarrassed if their mother or boss heard one of the songs; it probably wouldn't bother them to hear that there was some guy masturbating while listening to one of their songs.

However, it's easy to imagine someone being uncomfortable if their mother saw a photo of them smoking a cigarette. It could be career-limiting if The Boss saw a photo of them looking somewhat intimate with a co-worker. It could be disturbing to think that a stranger might be masturbating while looking at a photo of them.

All right, here's my effort to distill these two concepts to their essences.

Friends: A method of controlling access to data by a third party.

DRM: A method of controlling usage of data.

It's instructive to note that these two concepts are not necessarily exclusive. A hypothetical social networking service could allow Adam to download a photo of Beth in a DRM-restricted format that allowed him to view it, but not share it. Perhaps if he gets unfriended the DRM prevents him from viewing the photo any more, but not necessarily -- the service might just prevent him from accessing any new content posted by Beth.

And of course, you can substitute "music download service" for "social networking service", "mp3" for "photo", etc. and create another similar scenario.

>my photos are only mine and I can do what I want with them unlike DRM infested music which I don't have to full rights to even when I purchase them.

the photos you took are 'yours,' and un-DRM'd. When someone else gets a copy of them (either legally by purchasing a license from you, or by copying if your (CC) license allows them to do so), they don't have "full rights" to them either (again, unless you've given those rights away).

If you get to protect the photos that you took and therefore hold a copyright for, the music copyright holders should get to protect their work too.

There are plenty of individuals who take photos and choose to give them away, but that doesn't mean that every photographer chooses to do so. It's exactly the same with musicians, movie-makers, etc.

Social networks are more like Trust Management systems than Rights Management systems.
 
If I give you a song with DRM, the system tries to maintain my rights to it. The system mostly cares about what you can do with the song once you have it.
 
When I share something on facebook, the people who see it are people I've trusted to handle my info in a way I want them to. The trust management system is mostly cares about who I trust.
 
Rights and trust can both be taken away, but things tend to get messy either way.

Twitter feeds and social networking profiles are matters of interpersonal relationships and expectations; DRM manages rights (hence the name).

Rights are granted and owned by society. Once you've CC-licensed your photos, and I download one, it's mine (to use within the bounds of that license), and society backs me up on that.

Expectations are formed by our understandings of the world, but fulfilled by others, at their discretion. I have an expectation of access to my local coffee shop, but no right to it. If the owner takes a personal holiday and I can't get a cup of coffee, no one's going to fight for my right to get my caffeine fix.

I have a right to download your Flickr photos (depending on their license), and an expectation that I'll see more from you in the future, but no right to the latter.

The key difference is the nature of the content. Items that are subject to DRM are property... they are the intellectual property of the creators but they are also purchasable property, ownable property. Most of us publishing blogs or photographs or twitter remarks are creating intellectual property but not purchasable property, and that's an important distinction because of what we are essentially producing is speech. And we have a right to control who sees and hears that speech.

ps. I'm not arguing for DRM. I actually think DRM is abhorrent. DRM is an attempt to control your use of property, property that you own. Restrictions on social media are your attempts to control the access to your own speech. As long as that speech is free, I think you have the right to control it any way you want.

When you place limitations on who can see your photos on Flickr, you're doing so because of privacy concerns. However, a record company places limitations on the work it distributes to maximise profit. One is social exchange, the other is commerce.

Also, the record label doesn't place limitations on who can listen to their (artist's) music, but rather how the music can be listened to.

Also, you are the author of the Flickr photos. You are an individual taking control of your own output. DRM is implemented by corporations. There are plenty of individuals, whose output is being distributed by those corporations, who are opposed to the restrictions being applied to the distribution of their work.

So: apples and oranges.

I agree with the last comment, your photos or profiles raise privacy issues. Something you publish for anyone in the world to buy does not.

Also, DRM is unpopular because it does not work, in many different ways; for example, it restricts customers' legitimate freedom, and there has been no technical fix for this.

So I've designed an alternative way to sell content. Make it free and registration-free to the end user -- but only if a sponsor, anyone on Earth who can pay, has prepaid for that copy. Price the copies low to encourage sponsors to buy dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of copies at a time. Sponsors can deliver their own messages with their prepaid copies -- and can distribute those copies using a "smart URL," through whatever networks they wish. They can divide and subdivide a large sponsorship without limit, and distribute the parts separately. Etc.

I published this design for anyone to use, at www.smart-accounts.org

I thought you were kidding about this being an honest question, but no-one else in the comments seems to have spotted the distinction so here goes:

You can block access to your stuff on flickr or wherever based on the user logging in, but you have no control over what the people who do have access do. They can download it and print it out, make it into a T-shirt, email it to all their friends. You have to trust them not to do this and this trust isn't a choice or moral decision as such, it's a fundamental fact of how the internet and web work.

DRM pretends this isn't true, and is implemented by people who don't trust you (i.e. their customers, generally) and who try to prevent the users who have access (they are paying customers after all) from printing it out, making it into a T-shirt or emailing it their friends or any other unauthorized act. It fails because:

a) all the stuff you normally do with images from the web (or whatever) no longer works which annoys everyone trying to do things they thought were within their rights
b) assuming you can see it on screen you can screenshot it, or photograph it (the analog hole) or retype it and so most tech savvy people can get around it

This gives you two options: keep it secret, or trust the people you give access. DRM is for people who want to distribute widely to people they don't trust but also control exactly what they can do with it. They also believe the magic technology fairy will let them do this. It won't.