Ask Slashdot: What Would Happen If Everything On the Internet Was DRM Protected?

dryriver writes: The whole Digital Rights Management (DRM) train started with music and films, spread horribly to computer and console games (Steam, Origin), turned a lot of computer software you could once buy-and-use into DRM-locked Software As A Service or Cloud Computing products (Adobe, Autodesk, MS Office 365 for example) that are impossible to use without an active Internet connection and account registration on a cloud service somewhere. Recently the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) appears to have paved the way for DRM to find its way into the world of Internet content in various forms as well. Here's the question: What would happen to the Internet as we know it if just about everything on a website -- text, images, audio, video, scripts, games, PDF documents, downloadable files and data, you name it -- had DRM protection and DRM usage-limitations hooked into it by default?

Imagine trying to save a JPEG image you see on a website to your harddisk, and not only does every single one of your web browsers refuse the request, but your OS's screen-capture function won't let you take a snapshot of that JPEG image either. Imagine trying to copy-and-paste some text from a news article somewhere into a Slashdot submission box, and having browser DRM tell you 'Sorry! The author, copyright holder or publisher of this text does not allow it to be quoted or re-published anywhere other than where it was originally published!'. And then there is the (micro-)payments aspect of DRM. What if the DRM-fest that the future Internet may become 5 to 10 years from now requires you to make payments to a copyright holder for quoting, excerpting or re-publishing anything of theirs on your own webpage? Lets say for example that you found some cool behind-the-scenes-video of how Spiderman 8 was filmed, and you want to put that on your Internet blog. Except that this video is DRM'd, and requires you to pay 0.1 Cent each time someone watches the video on your blog. Or you want to use a short excerpt from a new scifi book on your blog, and the same thing happens -- you need to pay to re-publish even 4 paragraphs of the book. What then?

Comments

Re:Iâ(TM)ll continue going hiking

[Miser]

I'd take up/have time for more hobbies, one of which includes finding places to explore in the warmer months. If the Internet and tech in general weren't as "free" (in quote on purpose) as they are now, I'd just do other things unless there was a crack/hack available.

Too late to stuff that genie back in the (DRM) bottle anyway.....

Make your own internet?

[Seven Spirals]

I've thought about that scenario, too. It'd just be way too easy for the gubment to ban Wifi, WiMax (already licensed anyway), and packet radio for purposes of building your own network. That way only the politician's handlers can decide who gets access to the-one-and-only-Internet. Don't you think they'd just cut off the DIY avenue pretty quick? I mean, that's almost as dangerous as pirate radio. We simply can't have people just, you know, saying whatever they want. You think there is some kind of universal law protecting free speech? What? What is this burst dependent you speak of? Oh...... first amendment?.. Yeah, we don't do that anymore.

Re:Really?

[UnknownSoldier]

Exactly.

Back in the 80's we called it "Copy Protection" and we "kracked" (*) that stupid shit because media wears out, companies go out of business, kids damage disks, to LEARN, etc. and we got the legal right to back up our software.

DRM is a big "Fuck You to our legal right."

Sadly most people are wussies to get the law to change due to the country being an oligarchy / plutocracy / corporate shill, etc.

(*) Fucking media hijacked the definition of these words:

* Krack = Crack = to remove copy protection
* Kracker = someone who removed copy protection
* Hack = Quick Fix
* Hacker = Someone who is motivated SOLELY to LEARN. The unwritten "code of conduct" was to NEVER damage _anything._

New hijacked meaning:

Crack = drug
Hacker = someone who breaks into systems for either damage, for profit, espionage, etc.

Now get off my LAN.

And then there were two.

[fish_in_the_c]

I'd be sure to have a button in my search engine and or brower that said "never list sites contain DRM" So you can choose between the 'open net' and the 'commercial net'.

Exactely

[aepervius]

I was , what , 12 ? When I found out my floppy disk original ultima 5 disk stopped working "please insert original". I had started a month before to play around with debug to learn about how to make a ball (actually an ascii O) bounce around a screen. So I went into debug and used it against ultima.com (yes it wasn't even an exe at that time we were still in the 64K segment model). After bypassing the int 3h trap (they were replacing it with a jump to avoid people using it to set a breakpoint) I found out there were about 30 bytes IIRC which were encrypted (started using a single byte key, XOR it against first byte, then add 3 to key, XOR agaisnt next byte etc...). In that XORed area I found out that they were making a strange disk call (can't recall what it was, trying to set it on a track which should not exists but was present on the disk or the contrary) repalced it with 90h / NOP / reencrypted it, exchanged the byte in debug.com write it et voila i could play my legally owned game.

You never forget your first time ;). It is actually what brought me to in the end land in development. And I doubt any 12 year old would be able to have the same chance or the same start today.