I got a chance to go to the 4th session in BAVC's Innovation Salon series, where I got a chance to hear from some great panelists about the past, present, and future of digital rights. A couple of things that I walked away with:

• there are a lot of misconceptions about what "fair use" really means and what's defensible in court;
• the "download rights" for digital media is becoming increasingly expensive;
• American University is producing some great resources around "fair use" (a must-use resource for any digital media content creators);
• the Clinton years didn't do any favors (in fact, quite the opposite) for the little guy in the digital rights debate;
• there is now a culture and acceptance around the idea of "free media";
• despite who owns the rights, control of distribution channels is still directly correlated to profitability;
• there is so much turmoil among the old, reliable business models, but there's also some promise in some of the new uses of digital technology;
• the music industry is way more messed up than the movie industry (at least for now);
• engineers think the whole digital rights debate is pretty messed up and are continuing to invent ways to thwart it; and
• America's litigious society is what makes all these lawsuits responsible and as a result, the rest of the world thinks that we're, well, kind of crazy.

I walked out of there thinking that all of these changes were directly related to the technology advances. Without the technology, we wouldn't even be having these discussions. While there are all these fears that are being stoked and maintained by big industry, technology continues to push the envelope. Soon enough, there will be a tipping point where the public will begin to take back its collective cultural history. Until then, it'll be a wild ride!