Sun launches open-source digital rights plan (ZDNet)

Posted Aug 22, 2005 20:01 UTC (Mon) by rm6990 (guest, #30921)
Parent article: Sun launches open-source digital rights plan (ZDNet)

I can only see this as a good thing.

Right now, there are many different, conflicting DRM schemes. The problem with this is that sometimes media protected by one DRM scheme will not play on a media player not implementing that DRM scheme. If this becomes an industry standard, all media players could play all media if they have the proper codecs. Never mind the fact that most of this media simply won't play on Linux. With this, it would play on Linux and since it is open source, entities like Debian could ship it.

Also, since Linux is an open source OS, users who disagree with this could simply not install the software. Of course they will still complain about it, but people complain about everything anyways :-P

Sun launches open-source digital rights plan (ZDNet)

Posted Aug 23, 2005 13:47 UTC (Tue) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link] (3 responses)

That is the good thing.

As long as DRM causes inconvenines and headaches for casual users, there is a hope that the population won't quietly sit for it.

If one scheme takes over, and DRM becomes quietly ubiqitously usable, then we'll be stuck with it. Much as we are stuck with region coding and "unskippable tracks" on DVDs-- not enough people are irritated enough to make a big enough noise to help those who are irritated. It's just enough under the radar to get by.

-Rob

Sun launches open-source digital rights plan (ZDNet)

Posted Aug 23, 2005 20:59 UTC (Tue) by rm6990 (guest, #30921) [Link]

You make a very good point. I never thought about it like that. I think I have changed my mind and think this is a bad thing! I've never had an arguement make me change my mind so quickly before, congrats! :)

Sun launches open-source digital rights plan (ZDNet)

Posted Aug 23, 2005 22:59 UTC (Tue) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] (1 responses)

> If one scheme takes over, and DRM becomes quietly ubiqitously usable, then we'll be stuck with it. Much as we are stuck with region coding and "unskippable tracks" on DVDs-- not enough people are irritated enough to make a big enough noise to help those who are irritated. It's just enough under the radar to get by.

Except of course, that there are region code free DVD drives (or at least drives that let you change the code as often as you want) and I never have to watch any title on a DVD that I don't like. At least with mplayer.

Sun launches open-source digital rights plan (ZDNet)

Posted Aug 24, 2005 0:56 UTC (Wed) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

Well, yes :) True also here, I use MPlayer on my Linux laptop to freely skip unskippable tracks and not worry about regions. But my $90 Sony DVD player on my TV-- I have to put up with it. (Since I'm in the USA and probably won't move to Europe, regions don't really hamper me... but they do hamper people like Cory Doctorow, and others who travel between the USA and Europe, and that's just annoying.)

But, technically, you're a fedearl criminal when you do that. (At least if you're in the USA.) Maybe not for doing it, but by downloading dvdcss, you're trafficking in DMCA-forbidden copy-protection-cracking software.

More recently, though, DVD-ROM drives have come hardware-encoded as region protecting. If you're lucky, they come by default as region 0 and don't get changed.

-Rob