Maximise value, not protection

My response to a post on eds blog about the worth of GeoDRM:

Here’s a quote I find better every day:

“We think the natural tendency is for producers to worry too much about protecting their intellectual property. The important thing is to maximise the value of your intellectual property, not to protect it for the sake of protection. If you lose a little of your property when you sell it or rent it, that’s just a cost of doing business, along with depreciation, inventory losses, and obsolescence.”

– Information Rules, Carl Shaprio and Hal Varian, page 97.

Put another way, maximise the value not the protection. The value will of course merit some protection.