Muddying acronyms: DRM and IP

One of the things that came up in conversation at Copynight a few days ago was how IPac had changed its name. Previously it was Intellectual Property Political Action Committee, now it’s Information Policy Action Committee. This is because they don’t exclusively deal with intellectual property but policy that influences all sorts of information. It also just happens to dilute the acronym “IP.” I’m not sure if that dilution was intentional.

The same can’t be said for the wordplay surrounding DRM (there’s more on DRM too). I’m not sure if it’s a worthwhile cause or if it hurts the pro-user movement at all. Sometimes when I say Digital Restrictions Management I feel as ashamed as those kids who spell Microsoft with a dollar sign should. Still, I tend to stick to the negative sounding name for DRM because the software it applies to goes beyond protecting owners rights and into creating new restrictions.

The fight is ongoing. Right now the count for Digital Rights Management is about 1.6 million and Digital Restrictions Management is close to 200,000. Looks like there’s still some work to do.

Next I’ll be blogging from IT360 tomorrow. CLUE has a booth next to a Windows Server user group and I want to be there to watch.