I almost always respect your point of view here, but I don't understand this statement. Corporations aren't some sort of virtual evil entity. They're just a bunch of people working collaboratively to sell stuff.
Well it's fine, I do like business and big business is nessicary.
The business model has to make sense going in both directions.
That does happen already. They produce the copyrighted material, or at least provide important services for the artists that are the ones that are doing the actual work, and the government makes it illegal to violate that copyright. I don't see why that has to extend to changing how computers work. This DRM stuff is a grasp for power in a world were they already have a lot of it. As technology progresses the old technologists flip out and try to change the rules to keep themselves in power.
This happenned with the advent of recording equipment. Previously the companies that had a monopoly on music and such were people that produced printed copies of music, and they flipped out and tried to pass laws and such to control the ability to have people record music. They claimed that this was pure piracy because a person could by one copy of their printed music, record a session of it, and sell that recording. Then the companies that made recordings eventually won out over the companies that made lots of money on print music.
This happenned again with the advent of radio. Companies that made recordings flipped out and called the radio people pirates because the radio people can buy one copy of recorded music and play it on the airwaves to many listenners. And like with the recording people over the paper music people, the radio people won out.
Each new type of technology came along it changed out people listenned to music, changed how people watched shows, and created all sorts of hugely positive benifits for society. But with DRM your attempting to subvert technology.
It's like Bruce Schneier's quote:
"Certainly much less time than it will take Microsoft and the recording industry to realize they're playing a losing game, and that trying to make digital files uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet."
The whole thing is a waste of time, waste of money, and waste of energy. At best if the DRM people succeed the absolute best they will do will hold technology back maybe 10 or 20 years.
You guys almost sound like it's immoral for the content producers to _not_ want to release their stuff in freely copyable form. They know, and you know, that it would be widely available, for free, almost instantaneously. If you don't think that's holding back the open availability of such content, then I think you're wrong. As I said before, anyone who hates the idea of a protected path for content on the PC is voting for the continued monopoly of the cable providers and telecomms over that content. The producers who spend millions creating it will simply opt for the existing controlled delivery pipe, where they get a slice of the revenue. So would you, in their place.
It's not that it's immoral to try to protect their copyrights, it's immoral to do it in the method that they are doing. It's just that it's very very retarded the way they are going about it. The 'protected path' thing is pure BS. A waste of time, and the cost to computer's and people's freedom is entirely not worth the placebic value it gives 'big media'. They are taking very complex, very flawed, technical approach to making it inconvient to copy files combined with government legislation to limit the damage they are causing to themselves.
Its going to happen anyways. The future is going to be easy to access services.
Think about it.. Now anybody that wants to can go down to the local blockbuster and make copies of DVDs all day long. There are people that fill their houses up with dubbed VCR tapes and copied DVDs like some insane person collecting moldy newspapers. Most people don't do that. Why? Because it's a pointless waste of time, easier, and ultimately cheaper to just re-rent the stupid movie if you want to watch it again. Who is going to fill up their harddrives with movies, go and buy servers, and fight with their ISPs over stealing content when they can pay some guy 30 bucks a month to allow them to stream any movie or tv show ever made? (only compulsive pirates do this sort of thing..) Seriously, the problem isn't going to be trying to prevent piracy, people are going to fight over the ability to provide user's media and such to fill up consumer's limited leisure time.
The sooner these corporate types figure this stuff out then the sooner DRM is going to be relegated to the backwards technology graveyard.
