4 ms·

While I can totally relate to the sentiment, I strongly differ in the view that the battle against DRM is being lost. It's nothing that capitalism couldn't fix.

by _blk 2y ago

While I can totally relate to the sentiment, I strongly differ in the view that the battle against DRM is being lost. It's nothing that capitalism couldn't fix. Don't like it, don't buy it. Vendor didn't stick to their promise? Sell the hardware to someone who wants it and submit a review or a comment.. I don't like DRM either for many use cases but it's not often that I feel violated to use or buy a product against my will.

Joker_vD 2y ago
> It's nothing that capitalism couldn't fix. Don't like it, don't buy it. It's hard to buy alternatives when they literally don't exist, nobody is willing to provide them, and those who would maybe like to provide them, are quickly shut down by the industry's self-regulation mechanisms.
bayindirh 2y ago
When there's a one ring to bind them all (Microsoft PC platform certification), and everybody needs to cater to it, you can't do anything besides allowing your PC to play nice with Linux kernel, if you want to sell that device and make some money. OTOH, it's greatly helpful that Lennart Pottering of systemd is working squarely for Microsoft, enabling more and more of SecureBoot and TPM functionality in systemd to protect the users and systems' integrity in the face of adversarial attacks, so the PC can be TiVo-ized once and for all, after all. What a great era to be alive. BTW, this is exactly Capitalism, functioning as intended: extract value from a market for the shareholders of a company or an entity.
friendzis 2y ago
> It's nothing that capitalism couldn't fix. Free market could fix this, however unrestrained capitalism is, at it's core, anything but free. > Don't like it, don't buy it In practice DRM and majority of content go hand in hand, therefore the DRM compromise places majority of content on the compromise scale. Don't like DRM, don't buy access to entertainment. That's a much tougher sell than it might seem at a first glance. Unless the dominant majority shares your sentiment regarding DRM, you are on a losing side of the battle.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  > Don't like DRM, don't buy access to entertainment. Basically, that's a Hobson's Choice [0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobson%27s_choice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobson%27s_choice
forty 2y ago
I feel capitalism here is the problem, not the solution. The solution is file sharing (via BitTorrent & co), which is very much not capitalism.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  Or, "honest trade" (as a solution), I may say. I pay, I get files. I may pay more for higher grade files. With this model, I legitimately paid for: - Sidologie: A C64 game soundtrack tribute album, in lossless audio. - OK COMPUTER NOT OK: Reissue of Radiohead's OK COMPUTER album, in 24 bit studio masters (post mastering). - Too many albums from Bandcamp, in lossless form. - Apple iTunes, in acceptable quality AAC files. So it's possible, albeit less profitable (ERR_NOT_ENOUGH_VAL_XTRCT), so frowned upon. BTW, I used to play in an orchestra, so making music/art is not like writing code. It's way more abstract and painful to create.
  - forty 2y ago
    Don't get me wrong, I'm all for DRM-free purchases where most of the money goes to the artists. BitTorrent is a way to handle the fact when there is no such option (and put economic pressure so that options exist)
    - bayindirh 2y ago
      > BitTorrent is a way to handle the fact when there is no such option (and put economic pressure so that options exist). I fully agree. I just wanted to point that it's not that black and white, and there're a small number of grays in between.
  - account42 2y ago
    This model doesn't really exist for movies / tv series. Closest you can get are DRMed discs which which you can then rip into DRM-free files ... thanks to friendly pirates sharing the keys needed to access what you bought.
- _0ffh 2y ago
  > The solution is file sharing (via BitTorrent & co), which is very much not capitalism. You'd be surprised, how many laissez faire capitalists regard "intellectual property" to be an anti-capitalist artificiality. The whole raison d'etre for private property is that two people cannot use the same good for different purposes at the same time, it is rivalrous. Property ownership is the mechanism that resolves any potential conflicts arising from this rivalrousness. The owner gets to decide what to do with the good. The same is not true for information, because we can both e.g. watch the same movie at the same time without interfering with each other, therefore there is no conflict that needs resolving. Therefore "intellectual property" is not a thing. (The reasoning goes further, but that is the simplest version of the most important argument I think.)
Gibbon1 2y ago
> It's nothing that capitalism couldn't fix. This is what capitalism looks like.
ulrikrasmussen 2y ago
Capitalism and free market forces are not a magic bullet that will automatically optimize for your preferred utility function. They will optimize for profit and nothing else. This is why we need regulation to guide the market forces so we don't compromise the common good. I cannot buy a smartphone which allows me to run my operating system of choice and use my national identity as an app. It just doesn't exist. I can either buy an expensive Apple device which promises to not track me but which is also decidedly a walled garden by design and hence a capitulation; or, I can buy a phone running a commercial Android build which promises to do all it can to track me because that is literally the primary business model of the vendor. The latter option allows me to install another operating system without the built-in tracking, but at the expense of disallowing me to use the phone for what I actually wanted to use it for, and hence it is a disguised walled garden. Meanwhile, the vast majority of people are not aware of the situation and/or have no interest in running other software. Relying on capitalism to "fix" the issue literally just results in tyranny of the masses, or worse; indifference of the masses which allows tyranny of the tech giants.
- _blk 2y ago
  Thanks for detailing your viewpoint. I very much respect it, yet still disagree. Kindly allow this analogy: if capitalism optimizes for monetary profit alone, communism optimizes for the common good..

by _blk 2y ago

Joker_vD 2y ago

> It's nothing that capitalism couldn't fix. Don't like it, don't buy it. It's hard to buy alternatives when they literally don't exist, nobody is willing to provide them, and those who would maybe like to provide them, are quickly shut down by the industry's self-regulation mechanisms.

bayindirh 2y ago

When there's a one ring to bind them all (Microsoft PC platform certification), and everybody needs to cater to it, you can't do anything besides allowing your PC to play nice with Linux kernel, if you want to sell that device and make some money. OTOH, it's greatly helpful that Lennart Pottering of systemd is working squarely for Microsoft, enabling more and more of SecureBoot and TPM functionality in systemd to protect the users and systems' integrity in the face of adversarial attacks, so the PC can be TiVo-ized once and for all, after all. What a great era to be alive. BTW, this is exactly Capitalism, functioning as intended: extract value from a market for the shareholders of a company or an entity.

friendzis 2y ago

> It's nothing that capitalism couldn't fix. Free market could fix this, however unrestrained capitalism is, at it's core, anything but free. > Don't like it, don't buy it In practice DRM and majority of content go hand in hand, therefore the DRM compromise places majority of content on the compromise scale. Don't like DRM, don't buy access to entertainment. That's a much tougher sell than it might seem at a first glance. Unless the dominant majority shares your sentiment regarding DRM, you are on a losing side of the battle.

bayindirh 2y ago
> Don't like DRM, don't buy access to entertainment. Basically, that's a Hobson's Choice [0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobson%27s_choice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobson%27s_choice

forty 2y ago

I feel capitalism here is the problem, not the solution. The solution is file sharing (via BitTorrent & co), which is very much not capitalism.

bayindirh 2y ago
Or, "honest trade" (as a solution), I may say. I pay, I get files. I may pay more for higher grade files. With this model, I legitimately paid for: - Sidologie: A C64 game soundtrack tribute album, in lossless audio. - OK COMPUTER NOT OK: Reissue of Radiohead's OK COMPUTER album, in 24 bit studio masters (post mastering). - Too many albums from Bandcamp, in lossless form. - Apple iTunes, in acceptable quality AAC files. So it's possible, albeit less profitable (ERR_NOT_ENOUGH_VAL_XTRCT), so frowned upon. BTW, I used to play in an orchestra, so making music/art is not like writing code. It's way more abstract and painful to create.
- forty 2y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for DRM-free purchases where most of the money goes to the artists. BitTorrent is a way to handle the fact when there is no such option (and put economic pressure so that options exist)
  - bayindirh 2y ago
    > BitTorrent is a way to handle the fact when there is no such option (and put economic pressure so that options exist). I fully agree. I just wanted to point that it's not that black and white, and there're a small number of grays in between.
- account42 2y ago
  This model doesn't really exist for movies / tv series. Closest you can get are DRMed discs which which you can then rip into DRM-free files ... thanks to friendly pirates sharing the keys needed to access what you bought.
_0ffh 2y ago
> The solution is file sharing (via BitTorrent & co), which is very much not capitalism. You'd be surprised, how many laissez faire capitalists regard "intellectual property" to be an anti-capitalist artificiality. The whole raison d'etre for private property is that two people cannot use the same good for different purposes at the same time, it is rivalrous. Property ownership is the mechanism that resolves any potential conflicts arising from this rivalrousness. The owner gets to decide what to do with the good. The same is not true for information, because we can both e.g. watch the same movie at the same time without interfering with each other, therefore there is no conflict that needs resolving. Therefore "intellectual property" is not a thing. (The reasoning goes further, but that is the simplest version of the most important argument I think.)

Gibbon1 2y ago

> It's nothing that capitalism couldn't fix. This is what capitalism looks like.

ulrikrasmussen 2y ago

Capitalism and free market forces are not a magic bullet that will automatically optimize for your preferred utility function. They will optimize for profit and nothing else. This is why we need regulation to guide the market forces so we don't compromise the common good. I cannot buy a smartphone which allows me to run my operating system of choice and use my national identity as an app. It just doesn't exist. I can either buy an expensive Apple device which promises to not track me but which is also decidedly a walled garden by design and hence a capitulation; or, I can buy a phone running a commercial Android build which promises to do all it can to track me because that is literally the primary business model of the vendor. The latter option allows me to install another operating system without the built-in tracking, but at the expense of disallowing me to use the phone for what I actually wanted to use it for, and hence it is a disguised walled garden. Meanwhile, the vast majority of people are not aware of the situation and/or have no interest in running other software. Relying on capitalism to "fix" the issue literally just results in tyranny of the masses, or worse; indifference of the masses which allows tyranny of the tech giants.

_blk 2y ago
Thanks for detailing your viewpoint. I very much respect it, yet still disagree. Kindly allow this analogy: if capitalism optimizes for monetary profit alone, communism optimizes for the common good..