Dear Higher Education Faculty, Administrators, and Staff:
Did you know that your public funded ideas can find their way to the public?
On the internets?
For free?
You might think that your hard work and efforts could be safely ensconced away in obscure journals, embargoed for months at a time, but the pressures on the publishing industry are introducing new and dangerous threats to your ability to keep your public funded research efforts away from the public.
Through no fault of your own, your work could be released into the global body of knowledge, forming a foundation for the greater good by being shared with people you’ve never met, never heard of, who might take your basic research and build on it — or transform it in ways not even thought of yet. And they, gasp, might not even have a PhD!
And that’s just your findings — what about your data?!? Public funded DATA might find its way to the PUBLIC
Patents are not enough.
Intellectual Property Agreements are not enough.
105 years of copyright is not enough.
Your public funded ideas need to be protected from the public with a lockbox.
You need DRM.
Yes, DRM. Digital Rights Management. You need the ability to completely lock up your findings and your data in the digital world’s equivalent of a treasure chest buried on a desert island, protected by zombie scorpions. No, make that cursed zombie scorpions.
Only DRM can save your work — and your massive potential fortune that your future heirs will receive from your research results, embargoed, in your lockbox.
DRM can never be broken. And when it is within a few hours of you posting the lockbox — you — or better, your University’s legal department can sue the person that broke into your lockbox under something called the DMCA.
And when that doesn’t work — you can sue their neighbor — that grandmother that shamelessly downloaded your function that describes how polymerized derivative silicon substrates behave under high frequency UV wavelengths because “it had a good beat and she could dance to it.”
Think about it. DRM has done wonders for the music industry. Just like selling information has done for the publishing industry! Remember that software that you couldn’t get installed to complete your research? That was DRM! If it frustrated you — just think what it will do for the public! Your public-funded research will be safe from the public for generations to come!
Think about it. Actually don’t think — just do! DRM can be a win for you too.