Vista a Threat to Internet Freedom?

BBC columnist Bill Thompson warns readers that new DRM technology, especially that found in Vista, is damaging the freedoms that the internet was based on. "The freedom of expression that was once available to users of the Internet Protocol is being stripped away. Our freedom to play, experiment, share and seek inspiration from the creative works of others is increasingly restricted so that large companies can lock our culture down for their own profit. [...] governments and corporations around the world are making a concerted effort to dismantle the open internet and replace it with a regulated and regulable one that will allow them to impose an 'architecture of control.'"

Comments

thats not all!

[WeeBit]

We don't have Net Neutrality either, not when Operating Systems can pick what is permitted to run on it.

The threat is really

[Bullfish]

E-commerce... If you go back 10 years on the net, it was a wild and wooly place where people exchanged ideas, and software etc for nothing... or next to nothing (remember the comments that open source was communistic). Somewhere along the line more people started piling on the bandwagon leaving behind AOL, Prodigy, CompuServe et al and the business folk noticed. This lead to the .com boom and eventual bust and then, napster... which led to the first attempts at DRM. Now, everybody with a server wants to make a buck, and to protect that, one of the items in the toolbox is DRM. There are others, but if the intent for the studios is to deliver content to your computer and on to your TV, they want everybody and anybody involved to lock down the system to protect them from you and all your criminal buddies. Vista DRM is bad... sure so is Apple's DRM. Remember the claim that only pirates use linux...

Summary = FUD, article = great

[PFI_Optix]

The summary says:

Bill Thompson warns readers that new DRM technology, especially that found in Vista, is damaging the freedoms that the internet was based on.

The article says:

...It is not that the features built into Windows are evil, as some of the more hyperbolic bloggers claim, nor even that they are unnecessary.

It is that they change the way our computers work and the way they relate to the network, and those changes could be used to take away our freedoms.

Thanks to the internet we are seeing an unprecedented shift of power from the centre to the people, a shift that we observe in the media, in politics and in the way large companies respond to their customers.

We need to ensure that the freedoms we currently enjoy online are preserved as the network evolves, or this shift could easily end up as minor historical footnote.

The article is a warning to be vigilant, not a cry of impending doom. It's worth reading. Just ignore the summary.

Re:Probably all true.

[novus ordo]

How long before some lobbyist convinces the government to make it mandatory to use an *AA approved protocol/operating system which can be used to ensure that their IP 'rights' aren't being violated??

Actually that is exactly what they tried with PERFORM Act. Greed knows no bounds.

Re:Culture is a commodity

[Anonymous Coward]

Go and watch the corporation

That documentary explains it all far better than anybody here and you owe it to yourself to view it before using the "groupthink" argument.

Re:But there's so many to choose from

[Ash-Fox]

Who needs freedom when there's just got so many cool options?

I think this is the one you want.

Re:Culture is a commodity

[c_forq]

Just a small nit-pick. The tragedy of the commons applies to resources one can profit off of and are in limited supply, and/or that the population using the resource is big enough to endanger the sustainability of said resource. Overfishing isn't a problem until you have either more people living off the fish than the fish can reproduce at a rate to accommodate or fisherman have a reason to overproduce (commercial vs. substance farming). The idea is if population and/or fishing isn't regulated all the fish will disappear, followed by the population disappearing. The solution isn't to give control of the resource to one person/company, the solution is to make regulations on the resource and punish those who break said regulations.

Re:Probably all true.

[NShade]

Actually that is exactly what they tried with PERFORM Act. Greed knows no bounds.

Not only that, but they exhumed that bill and are trying again.

Re:Legal Key invalid...

[Technician]

I have to pay the Gateway mafia their payola or download an illegal version of Windows and put my legal key in.

With DRM what you expect and what you get may not be the same. I recall seeing some discussion of the Legal XP key becomming invalidated in the Vista upgrade process.

A quick Google search brings up gems like "Vista will invalidate your XP key (so you won't be able to set up a dual-boot option nor will you be able to use that version of XP on another machine). Not only that, but if you ever uninstall Vista, you won't be able to fall back on your copy of XP anymore. Nice"

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/software/upgrade-to-vis ta-lose-your-xp-key-232647.php

Single vendor copy protected software may not provide you the privilages you expected to recieve when you bought it.

Any questions?

Re:Informal Poll

[p0tat03]

I'm a Mac user, you might be better off looking at Linux if DRM-free-ness is what you want. Apple is as big a pusher of DRM as Microsoft. That said, it tends to be less in-your-face about it.

Re:Informal Poll

[PopeRatzo]

I had to run out and buy a computer on Sunday when my regular broke down and I've got a project pending. The machine I wanted had "Vista Home Premium" installed on it, so, not having much of a choice, I brought it home and turned it on, hoping to get my work in before the Super Bowl kickoff.

I lasted a few hours and then wiped the disk and put XP Pro on it. The last straw was when I tried to put Daemon Tools on it and it wouldn't boot any more.

From my few hours' experience, I can tell you that Vista is not a platform for people who like to do things with their computers outside of the what Microsoft wants you to do.

Oh, and the first thing that I saw when I booted up the first thing was some sort of "Out of Box Experience Assistant". It crashed with a fatal error. I shit you not.