Perhaps the biggest cost associated with QOS is the restriction that companies will place on content use. DVDs are a perfect example. It was the control of digital video that initially scared the movie studios—so much so that they waited years to release it until they were comfortable with its level of copy protection. You just can't let perfect copies of movies out in the open market without an unbreakable security wrapper.
Of course, we all know how long that lasted. Originally, the CSS encryption on DVDs could only be decrypted on certain kinds of machines. From watching the battles over DeCSS, we already know that such software protection schemes can be broken. Some are more difficult to break than others, but almost all can be defeated.
Because the movie industry's DVD copy protection scheme failed so quickly, the copyright war front moved from software to hardware. If data can't be protected with software encryption, then, some bright lights figured, it might be easier to build locks into the hardware.
As I write this, a move is underway in Congress to actually require manufacturers to embed DRM technology in every new digitally enabled hardware device that's built or distributed in the United States. The proposed Security Systems Standards and Certification (SSSC) Act would try to win the battle by targeting any device capable of storing, transmitting, or playing digital media. Even if the proposed hardware schemes could be defeated, most consumers aren't likely to try. It's much easier to download DeCSS than it is to take apart and rebuild your computer. For that reason, regardless of whether the SSSC Act passes or fails this year, expect to see the restrictions it would impose repurposed in future legislation.
Unfortunately, in current practice, these new architectures in software and hardware are more often used to establish control and strangle the free use of information than to ensure quality of service.
XML and the Semantic, Subversive Web
Flying under the radar of the ever-vigilant eyes of those in the control department, however, XML is taking Web architecture in a completely different direction. It isn't a QOS initiative in the manner of routing packets more efficiently, but its impact on a quality Web experience is likely to be much longer lasting.
While XML requires strict adherence to coding standards, that same strictness enables a rich form of data interchange that wasn't previously available on the Web. By describing data using XML, we make that data more useful to everyone else on the Internet. So the tight XML wrappers that we place around data actually have the opposite effect of most digital rights management systems. Because XML gives our data meaning, it also gives it legs. It lets others use that data, and actually encourages data mining for productive purposes.
In this way, XML is subversive. It lets data be used in ways that the person providing it never intended, but which prove valuable for the person who gathers it. Consider that thought for a minute, then think about how it contrasts with the way corporate law departments have handled other unforeseen uses of their information. It isn't just CDs ripping into MP3s and DVDs turning into DivX;-) files, but a deeper obsession within many corporations for controlling data.
For example, in spite of pitching itself as the consulting company you should turn to when you want to spend millions of dollars on a digital transformation, KPMG now has its data police telling Webmasters to take down so-called "deep links" to any page on kpmg.com other than its home page. So much for the KPMG marketing blabber about how "the Internet is turning every traditional notion of how business should be conducted upside down." The KPMG lawyers and brand managers don't have the foggiest idea about the technology described in their own company's press material. And you know that KPMG's lawyers aren't alone.
When agents capable of parsing and understanding XML become commonplace, an angry lawyer somewhere will burst into the office of his company's Web group demanding to know why corporate data has been "misused" by another company.
And unfortunately, those corporate concerns about free-flowing data may actually prevail. Control will kill QOS. Data won't be described in a way that makes it semantically comprehensible unless all possible downstream uses of that data can be controlled.
Quality Over Control?
Just a few days ago, some of the major recording labels released a long-promised digital music service designed to satisfy the demands of former Napster users. This new service, called PressPlay, lets you buy songs to play on a single computer—no other device—for as long as you pay a monthly subscription fee. Stop paying the fee, and the files turn into pumpkins. You can't transfer the songs to an MP3 player or burn them onto a CD, but you can listen on the tinny speakers that come with most PCs. Some deal.
Rather than try to compete with Napster's free service by providing a higher quality of service than a P2P network could ever offer, copyright owners chose to kill free music through lawsuits. They then offered up a shoddy service in the vacuum they created.
Champions of P2P might disagree, but from where I sit, the record industry has largely had its way so far. It has used the legal system and the architectures of control to drive out Napster, Aimster, and any other system capable of offering an easy to use, searchable music database. It could have seized the moment and offered a real option, based on quality, but this new service is DOA. I have no doubt that the market would support a "legal" version of Napster, but this new offering isn't that. There's too much control, too little quality.
You have to wonder who will win this war and how long it will take. And believe me, it is a war. Although newspapers are only covering the fight between Hollywood lawyers and Norwegian hackers, the real battle is within corporations themselves. Those who understand how to use code to create value are struggling with the people charged with protecting corporate assets.
It will be a long time before digital entertainment moguls stop worrying about control and begin considering QOS. But what about other technologies? XML and the promise of a semantic Web are some of the most exciting things happening right now in technology. The only question now is how those who value control will deal with new technologies that enable quality.
Bret is an intellectual property and Internet attorney with Hancock, Rothert & Bunshoft. You can reach him at [email protected]
