DRM is a bit of a red herring. [LWN.net]

DRM is a bit of a red herring.

Posted Feb 12, 2007 0:30 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
In reply to: DRM is a bit of a red herring. by b3timmons
Parent article: Recommendation: no GPLv3 for Solaris

I agree with that statement.

No form of 'DRM' is practical at all, when your goal is to control what people do with their own hardware and software. (you encrypt the data to 'protect it', but you have to give them the keys, hardware, and software nessicary to decrypt it, but depend on secrets to control their usage of it.)

The only way it works is through legal enforcement. With out DMCA then it would be profitable for businesses crack DRM and sell software and devices to do that.. the more stronger the DRM the more profitable cracking it would be. It would be so weak that invensting large amounts of money into it would garrentee business failure.

In the long run cracks and such will almost certainly always be aviable. Once those cracks are codified into redistributable software then it's trivial for people to use them..

but by breaking the law it's pretty much useless to people that want legetimant uses of their hardware and software that they do own themselves.

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