Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil
I think DRM is evil because it takes control away from the user; that's it's function, and it wouldn't be very useful DRM without it. It is a software adversary, that protects its masters from its users, and presumes guilt over innocence. And unlike say a gun, which has legitimate uses (all of which, incidentally, involve hurting people), DRM has no legitimate uses, because every potential justifiable use of DRM is more than counteracted by the significant harm. It would be like saying that arming people with explosives wasn't a problem because they can be used for legitimate self-defence, despite the fact that they cause serious structural damage to nearby property if used as intended. It only works in an ideal world where every copy is piracy and not a legitimate copy, and where the owner of the content is the only entity who can make informed choices about those copies. DRM cannot judge intent the way a person can, so that means DRM will fail where a person will not, sooner or later, as this case illustrates; if the DRM were working correctly, it would not prevent my brother from using his files--a technical impossibility for DRM to be useful.
More interesting, unless you have law to require DRM servers to run forever, there will come a point where DRM actually harms a company's interests rather than help it. I'm not exactly sure what Amazon intend to do; I guess they're hoping that people will have had a good enough run with their content by the time they shut down the servers, but I guess we won't know until it happens; we don't even know when, because anything might happen to cause it, not just a company bankruptcy or merger, but it's not like we haven't seen other examples of people losing everything to DRM before. I for one won't be caught out by that when it happens.
_______________________________________________ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
