Why DRM might not be a bad thing
» 25/01/2007, 16:24:13 / / / Subscribe
Wow, yeah - I didn't think I'd ever write/say that either but I have to admit that in thinking about the wider implications that might happen if we don't take DRM and accept it I might well come around to the idea of DRM. Let me waffle for a second about why.
I will probably never encounter it
Selfish, but I think the above is a true enough statement for me. I, like a lot of other folks have at points in the past downloaded music from the web. That could have been via P2P, News Groups, IRC, yer know what? I just can't remember. I digress, I won't ever buy music on the web in the form of a DRM wrapped piece of media so DRM probably, at least for a long time, won't mean much to me. I don't own an iPod or anything that actually requires something DRM(ish).
People keep cracking DRM protection systems
Which is a wonderful thing isn't it? The hacker in me agrees very much - I like to beat systems as much as the next tinkerer. The realist in me has a...
However, and it's a big however - consider this. Once the RIAA goes back to the US Gov and says, "hey, you know what - we've tried it all, protection systems, closing down websites and we just can't stop them cracking our protection systems and they take great pleasure spreading it for free", "well what can the US Gov do for you about that?", "fuck net neutrality start taxing bandwidth so people have to pay to download ANYTHING and that should help us cover the huge amount of money we think we're loosing". "Ok so every time we identify a site that hands out free movies, music and what not YOU'LL get a cut of the tax, because hey we'll micro manage it passing the costs back to the ISP's, passing them back to EVERYONE - excellent, old Europe will love the $ to GBP conversion rate on that! ha!"
Your Free-dumb
Quite simply that's it folks. The more we break protection systems and make the content PUBLICALLY ACCESSIBLE the more likely it will be that you'll be paying to download data in the end - breaking the very spirit of the web. Now that might be just your email and if so let's hope that nobody sends you large attachments and hey let's hope you don't want to send any either. Don't forget that the ability to charge per person for bandwidth means that much better logging of WHERE YOU GO AND WHAT YOU DO will have to be put in place. The repercussions of cracking DRM at the software level are a little wider than your average S'Kiddie considers when he runs the latest cracking tool on some movie, music or whatever.
I'm way more an advocate of my privacy and a free internet then I'll ever be of having movies, music and other stuff for free.
Don't get me wrong I'm in no way suggesting this to be the future but it may just end up being this way - the very people fighting against this type of system may well inadvertently be handing everyone else's ass to them in a different way. Some of the crackers out there are giving the RIAA every reason to get the US Gov to do this net neutrality thing... So does DRM seem so bad when you polarise it against your privacy? The inconvenience of it seems next to nothing when I consider that I really don't want to pay just to use a specific network that happens to be attached to the web.
Just imagine how easy it would be to stifle free speech and ideas if paying to see it were involved eh? The level of state/social control it potentially offers is frightening, very very frightening indeed.
I'm all for beating systems, but the problem these days is that the people that take tools they never wrote and en-masse rip films for downloading; do it not for the beating the system factor but for the sudo-l337n355 that comes with it. Really sad. I think it's time the hackers took responsibility for there tools to stop them getting in the hands of S'Kiddie crackers (and yes folks there is a difference between the two). Like it used to be, like it should have stayed! Those little S'Kiddies will, possibly, in the end be the death of what we all hold true about the web.
Feel free to chip in if you have something to say.
Technorati: drm hacker cracker script kiddie net neutrality p2p
