Today, of course, telephone numbers are associated with people. You can keep your number if you change phones (_things_), you can keep your number if you move (change _places_), and you can even keep your number if you change carriers. [I'm speaking of the United States here, of course. I have no idea what other countries allow or disallow.] We can argue about what other things remain stupid, but the big thing–that association of our number to _us_ and not some _thing_ or _place_ is a big improvement.

One of the (admittedly many) objections to DRM is that it associates our content–that stuff we bought–with a _thing_ instead of with _us_. We bought that book from Amazon; the Kindle did not buy the book. Yet, the purchase is associated with the Kindle device, much like my old phone number was associated with that ugly blob on the wall in the kitchen. A much better system would provide me the ability to say, “This is me–let me read my books.” It would be best if it didn’t matter where I was, or even what device I was using. [We can push that whole "e-babel" thing off for the time being...]

One way to prove that “I am me” is to have a private key in a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). If the content is encrypted with my public key, only I can decrypt it with my private key. In this world, it wouldn’t matter if I got a new Kindle (or 7 new Kindles); I would be able to read _my_ content on any of them assuming I could present my private key to the device. This arrangement, rather that having Amazon, or Microsoft, or Apple, or Google keep track of the serial numbers of specific devices, makes a lot more sense. People just sell me stuff and encrypt it with my public key. What happens next, or later, or years from now has nothing to do with the publisher. It is my private business with my private key.

While it is still DRM, it is a much more sensible arrangement than those in play today. If we’re going to have DRM, let’s have something that looks more like PKI model than the “telephone on the wall” model.