It’s not pointless if it works! Seriously though, those of us who don’t like DRM need to switch messaging from “It’s bad AND it’s pointless/useless!” to “It’s

It’s not pointless if it works! Seriously though, those of us who don’t like DRM need to switch messaging from “It’s bad AND it’s pointless/useless!” to “It’s bad!” The “it’s pointless” part has clearly been interpreted as a challenge, and now we’ve got incredibly invasive junk creeping in at all levels of hardware and software, and it’s not actually inconveniencing everyday consumers that much (hackers and powerusers are a different story), and it’s working better all the time. I’m not sure exactly how to make this argument these days, but smugly saying “DRM will always be pointless in the end!” isn’t actually true, and I feel like we need to focus on the fact that the measures being taken to make it not pointless are impinging on both user privacy and the ability of open ecosystems (like Linux distros and more open hardware) to be useful for everyday media playback.