Is DRM Intrinsically Distasteful?

jelton writes "If digital media was available for sale at a reasonable price, but subject to a DRM scheme that allowed full legitimate usage (format shifting, time shifting, playback on different devices, etc.) and only blocked illicit usage (illegal copying), would you support the usage of such a DRM scheme? Especially if it meant a wealth of readily available compatible devices? In other words, if you object to DRM schemes, is your objection based on principled or practical concerns?"

Comments

you don't understand

[Kohath]

You don't understand the motivation.

The groupthink is:
- Hate corporations
- Hate DRM
- Download all your media for free on the internet. A reasonable price is $0.

So the answer is yes. All DRM is bad unless RMS writes it and it allows us to get all our entertainment media for free on the internet. If people from corporations are maimed or killed by this DRM somehow, then Slashdot might be OK with it. As long as it runs on Linux and there's source code available.

Re:Both.

[DavidTC]

Really? What if the government sues the author that you want to read and they don't want you to, finds him in violation of some law, and fines him all his property, requiring him to sell the copyrights to the work to the highest bidder? Which the government makes sure is some rich crony of theirs who doesn't actually sell it to anyone, and, as the legal owner of the copyright, can make all the DRM players not play it anyone. (We're talking about mythological DRM that can magically follow 'the law', remember.)

If that won't work, some extra-legal threats of their family should get them to stop distribution and lock up all existing copies.

Or, easier still, find the original work a violation of copyright. Perhaps they were under a employment contract that said everything belonged to their employer. If they weren't, well, that's easy enough to forge.

Copyright is censorship. It's the government preventing people from distributing information. It, in theory, only does so at the author's request, but don't assume there's no way around that.

Implementing a vast system that could magically connect to the Library of Congress and check the status of the copyright of every single work, and decide if you were 'allowed' to view it is just asking for government censorship.