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DRM does have it's place | 171 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
DRM does have it's place
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, March 12 2013 @ 03:01 PM EDT

Yes - I actually said that.

The only place I can see DRM as valid - useful for blocking access while not exceeding authority preventing access people otherwise have - is.... drum roll please... badda dadda adaada:

    Trade secrets!
That's it. When you want to keep something as a trade secret. Then it's appropriate because you are not exceeding your authority.

I do not speak to the technical difficulties with trying to keep something digital secret.

Only to my opinion with regards my understanding of the exchanges that are supposed to occur under Copyright and Patent Laws and the fact that there are those Copyright/Patent owners who are trying to exceed their authority by - for example - preventing fair use.

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

DRM is copy protection - and copy protection has never succeeded in the market
Authored by: artp on Wednesday, March 13 2013 @ 02:39 PM EDT
If you look back at early PC history, you will find lots of attempts to
introduce copy protection that was intended to protect sellers from
"piracy" - unauthorized use of a program. The market always routed
around these sellers. People bought other programs, or raised such a stink that
the seller dropped copy protection. There was no copy protection cartel that
could make it stick. Technology routed around the damage, just like the Internet
does.

Today, things are different. Copy protection (DRM) is being enforced by
legislation - copyright legislation - by a cartel that has stuck together for
decades. There IS no other seller to turn to for most of these products. I could
always find a different word processor, but you can't find a different Batman.
Even finding a different Wizard of Oz is difficult.

DRM and copy protection is impossible. It is impossible because in order to be
useful, you need to be able to access it through the DRM. It is analogous to
Wimpy trying to sell hamburgers with DRM. Wimpy can lock the hamburgers up in a
chest just for himself (preferred situation) and nobody can get at them without
destroying the chest AND the hamburgers.

But if Wimpy wants certain other people to get at the hamburgers, then he has a
problem. There has to be a way to get at the hamburgers. And that is an opening
that WILL be exploited. Anybody can wander by and see that there is a mechanism
to get hamburgers out to be used by somebody besides Wimpy. Then it is just a
matter of finding out how it works.

The cartels need to resign themselves to the fact that if they want to
participate in a digital market - where copying is inherent and inseparable -
then they need to allow copying, or they cripple their product.

If they do not learn this lesson, then the Internet will route around the damage
in two ways, both of which are happening already:

1) DRM will be broken, or copies will be made in other ways. They already sold
it. They are not in control of all copies. Somebody will make that next copy.

2) A new market will develop. Others will make product that is not copy
protected. They will deal with the Internet on its own terms. This will have
great appeal to those who have started to understand the power that the Internet
gives them. I won't be able to get Batman, but I can get a superhero with a cape
(Incredibles notwithstanding) who fights crime in a big city. It will be good
enough.

---
Userfriendly on WGA server outage:
When you're chained to an oar you don't think you should go down when the galley
sinks ?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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