John Gilmore looks at the effect the lack of open standards has hurt the digital author not associated with major studios. He discusses several examples, such as Apple's iDVD and Sony's MiniDisc format. He is legally unable to copy his brother's wedding using the MiniDisc format, even though he holds the copyright because it assumes that he's trying to pirate content. With iDVD, he comments on Apple's marketing, which states that “the major consumer applications for recordable DVD will be home movie editing and storage and digital photo storage” and not potential fair-uses like time-shifting digital content. He further points out Apple is not offering authors the ability to encrypt their own copyrighted films and materials. If copy protection is so essential to protecting the copyright holders intellectual property, why isn't readily available to all copyright holders?

Where copy protection goes wrong is that it takes away rights from the new digital author and monopolizes the protections of them for only a select few. Competing open DRM formats have begun to emerge to fill this gap. However, a young filmmaker needs to ensure that his video is as compatible as possible. He now has the choice between protecting his work but preventing it from being played on DVD players that don't support the new open formats (most of them), or exposing his work to piracy.

Gilmore's arguments shows a strong legitimate need for an open source developers to develop applications that might be in violation of the DMCA. An open source application might expose certain algorithms and codes, and even development of a closed source application would likely require breaking encryption at some point in the product's development.  The courts and the copyright office generally use the phrase “mere inconvenience” and wave their hands at demonstrated harm to consumers not being able to access their digital content.  However, requiring young authors to get picked up by a major licensed company in order to receive protection can hardly be so easily ignored.  The best solution to lowering the barrier of entry for copyright protection is through an open source DRM standard that either is adopted by major players or at least cocurrently supported with their proprietary technologies.