As reported last week in the MIT Libraries News:

The MIT Libraries have canceled access to the Society of Automotive Engineers’ web-based database of technical papers, rejecting the SAE’s requirement that MIT accept the imposition of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology.

SAE’s DRM technology severely limits use of SAE papers and imposes unnecessary burdens on readers. With this technology, users must download a DRM plugin, Adobe’s “FileOpen,” in order to read SAE papers. This plugin limits use to on-screen viewing and making a single printed copy, and does not work on Linux or Unix platforms.

At a time when DRM is being challenged in other spheres, SAE’s onerous requirements are an excellent example of self-foot-shooting.  Paranoic emphasis on protecting your resources at all costs, is now costing them subscription revenue.  Their requirement for [Windows only] plugins to enable users to access their documents is the equivalent to only providing eggs in a form suitable for making an omelette – But I want mine boiled!.

Yes, they have a revenue stream they would like to protect but so did all the monks creating illuminated manuscripts before those pesky book things turned up. 

You may have noticed that we at Talis are passionate about Open Data.  By Open I don’t necessarily mean free.  I mean open for use by those that can gain value from, and add value to, it.  In that scenario there is room for a wide spectrum of complementary licensing models from the totally free and unrestricted, to subscription and other chargeable models.   We have even drafted the Talis Community License as a contribution to the debate around how aggregations of data can be licensed in an open way.

Data can add value, providing you can find it and you can use it.  I haven’t dug in to SAE’s site to discover how easy they make things to find, but I think MIT have given the thumbs down on the usability front.

(Photo taken by Monceau displayed in Flickr)

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