Laser & DRM

Laser & DRM

Posted Oct 5, 2006 14:38 UTC (Thu) by stijn (subscriber, #570)
In reply to: Laser & DRM by mingo
Parent article: Similar in spirit?

Right now I have not yet seen convincing examples where DRM could be Good. In the proposed scenarios the Goodness comes from preventing certain evil things, where to me it seems that those evil things are illegal to begin with and can be prevented by other means, e.g. contract, warranty, ownership, access and probably a few others. The proposed scenarios, as far as I am aware, furthermore have so far been thought experiments. Correct me if I am wrong. As for the "engineer's conscience", we drive cars that are well capable of killing ourselves and other people with a minimum of effort (and the list is neverending), never mind guns.

So on the one hand we have evil DRM marching in on our lives, limiting our rights and taking away stewardship, with no Good specimen yet to be discovered. On the other hand we have the possibility that Good DRM may further our lives at some point in the futures. As far as I am aware, the Good DRM in those scenarios 1) can be replaced by other means and 2) is likely not a definite remedy to the problem it is supposed to solve either.

I appreciate your concern about 'defining good and evil', but the considerations above and the scenarios thus far have to my mind not yet advanced the DRM case.

Then there is the issue whether the DRM clause now makes v3 transcend software by tying keys to the source. The discussions elsewhere have not convinced me that Pandora's box has been opened. It is a view consistent with the four freedoms that Tivoization violates the spirit of GPL v2, although I am still trying to decipher your Tivo/PC/harddisk/binary example elsethread!

---

(Log in to post comments)