Wikipedia:Peer review/Digital rights management/archive1

Digital rights management

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review mainly because of the comments left while it was a featured article candidate.

Thanks, Hello71 01:30, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

• {{doing}} Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 23:42, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Comments by David Fuchs

• Overall, there's a solid base of an article there, and it's much improved since it's post-FAC days, c. 2006. Anyhow... still lots of problems, so I'm only hitting broad strokes here; things like style issues and prose can't really be addressed until the article is more complete.
  • There's still an issue of referencing; in fact, that's one of the single most damning strikes against the article. It's most apparent in the introduction, which is almost entirely unreferenced and feels like it's unverified synthesis. Same thing continues with Technologies: how am I supposed to believe "An early example of a DRM system was the Content Scrambling System (CSS) employed by the DVD Forum on film DVDs since ca. 1996" is either the best example or one of the earliest? The article is lacking some history and context beyond what is available in the introduction.
  • The "Technologies" needs some "historicizing"—that is, using historical accounts and examples rather than news articles from the time of the DRM issue, etc., where possible. Some elements are given undue weight because of the reliance on these easily available sources—for example Ubisoft's DRM gets far more mention than any other game developer. Is there a source that shows that they have been the predominant users of DRM? Otherwise it's most likely original research.
  • Much of the "DRM and documents" section seems to apply to multiple mediums... perhaps this is better put in an intro paragraph to technologies?
  • "Table of DRM technologies and associated devices"... I would say axe this entirely. It's hardly ever going to be an exhaustive list of DRM, such a list is pretty useless and bloats the article, and all the notable examples will be covered in the relevant section before this point.
  • Undue weight: the DMCA gets a large subsection, while other countries are giving one-line mentions. If you can show, for example, that most media that uses DRM is American, that would be a good fact to add to the article and would legitimize the section. Either way, it could probably be cut down and summarized so there's less legalese.
  • Controversy: As would be expected on free culture Wikipedia, this section needs the most work. It starts out with the unverified and weasely "Many organizations, prominent individuals, and computer scientists are opposed to DRM." It then gives way too much ink to way too many people. The same thing occurs with "Shortcomings". I would shorten and tighten both these sections, and add more information on the reason DRM is actually used. The intro doesn't give us much, but it's pretty obvious since there's DRM there are its defenders, even if they're just corporate suits. They should be heard.
  • Turn "historical note" into a real history section as said above, and move it up in the hierarchy!
• In summation: Cut down certain sections, expand others, find sources (and better ones) for the rest. Note: I don't watchlist these reviews, so if you need to get my attention ping me at talk.

--Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 04:22, 26 October 2010 (UTC)