By mixing, tweaking, sampling, and matching pieces of music together, a skilled artist can make something that equals more than the sum of its parts. If you're looking for examples, take DJ Shadow, El-P, or RJD2. Listening to an album by either artist, it's not even necessarily apparent that you're listening to song 1+song 2, it's music in its own right. I don't know how they do it, but it's definitely not to be underestimated.
I entirely agree that BMI is a flawed system. It doesn't pretend to be an absolutely foolproof statistic, either. Body fat percentage is more indicative of overall health, of course, but the main issue with using body fat by ratio is that it's much harder to measure accurately. And that's a recurring theme within medicine, especially the types of medicine that focus on improving the overall health of the patient, rather than simply finding a problem to solve. It's a problem that implanted and ingested sensors will solve rather than exacerbate, because they allow for more accurate measurement in an easier, more constant manner.
It really doesn't "fall short" in any case. Digital tools are tools nonetheless, and equally capable of transferring emotion to a sonic medium. There is plenty of 'digital' music that does so consistently, it's just a matter of finding it.
You're underestimating a synthesizer. Take a look at a Moog sometime. There's a lot of knobs and dials, and they all do something (and most of them do something that was nearly impossible with any other instrument invented). A saxophone can't gradually alter its entire timber mid-phrase, the closest wind instruments have are the various kinds of mute, each limited in its ability in a way a synthesizer isn't. The electric guitar is the closest, because using different digital and analog pedals one can achieve a massive range of effects, in much the same way a synthesizer does. And, may I ask you to remember what the common reaction was to the invention of the electric guitar? Much the same as the modern reaction of so-called 'purists' to the popularization of sampling, synthesizing, and digital production via software. The fact of the matter is, they are no longer able to be looked at as more or less than each other. They are simply different ways of making art, and each is capable of truly amazing things.
The same thing applies to the waves of digital music produced for things like raves. To quote one observer at the Globe and Mail 'So now we know why Deadmau5 and Daft Punk wear helmets when they perform. Everybody is digging the music, but no one is dancing. It is a sad development; the headgear of the maestros is there to mask their tears.'
No, it doesn't apply to "the waves of digital music produced for raves". Firstly, the rave scene died in the 90's, but it appears that you're not actually referring to a rave, you're talking about a concert by a musician whose methods you don't understand. Go see any decent house, dubstep, or techno artist play, and suddenly it's apparent that the quote you referenced is completely wrong, at least in the context in which you're using it. You can get a crowd moving with a Macintosh, it's not that difficult.
Will the live performance of instrumental musicians also become a thing of the past?
No, it won't.. Look to the same examples to see evidence that musicians without vocalists are actually becoming far more popular. And if you're trying to insinuate that a DJ isn't an 'instrumental' artist, you're wrong. A pair of turntables is an instrument just as a guitar is, and a performance using one requires just as much 'musicianship' as with any other instrument.
As is the case with most technological advancement, it will benefit the vast majority of cases while being detrimental to a vast minority of cases. If anything, false positives will be a bigger issue than false negatives, as is the case with most sensor systems (such as in security). More important is that implantable sensors don't do anything other than replacing non-implantable sensors. You can have a series of sensors monitor your body temperature, which might have very important implications in early-warning diagnosis of many diseases in a way that even the patient will likely not realize. The same is the case with this sensor, which allows for the same kind of detection of certain kinds of cancer.
What people tend to be afraid of is going to a doctor when they "know" something is wrong, only to be turned down because their temperature is fine and pain surveys come back inconclusive (As happens to a staggering number of hypochondriacs daily). The issue is, the 'standard' setting for sensors is never 'normal', because 'normal' is never zero. If a sensor breaks or turns off, or even if it reads a constant value looped indefinitely (contrasting against the otherwise-dynamic readings a working sensor would return), that will obviously be a problem with the sensor, and a doctor won't be fooled.
Because in the context of the machine, it makes sense. TCS and stability control are fairly useful for city driving, but they limit what an expert driver can do with a car. Since the Carrera GT is meant for expert drivers, and it's suited to track performance more than daily driving, its not really beneficial. Of course, people are going to buy the Carrera GT to use it as a daily driver, and most of those people aren't experts, but that isn't to say the car is inherently dangerous-- Only that those drivers are dangerous.
Don't underestimate the average American. By doing so, you threaten to fall victim to the fallacies you belittle in them. It's easy to elevate your beliefs above everybody else's, but that's neither right nor beneficial to anybody. I think if you'd give people more of a chance, you might notice that you're not the only one fed up with being lied to.
Yes, they definitely think they do. Rather, I would guess that it's part of the deal Netflix has with its content providers, who would otherwise be staying up nights about the possibility of people downloading movies that they are supposed to be streaming. Not that it's foolproof, as any kid with a video card and FRAPS can attest, or that there's a bit of Netflix content that can't be pirated elsewhere. In short, yes, Netflix has DRM. But, they don't need DRM, and I'm certain that their service wouldn't lose much from providing HTML5 streaming. The MPAA members might have an aneurysm, though, which would probably end up hurting Netflix indirectly.
I disagree with the notion that "it'd be hard to convince people" to ingest medical sensors. Perhaps blood-based sensors would fall prey to that kind of thinking, but those aren't quite possible as of yet. Although a certain number of so-called skeptics will be eager to outline the GPS-tracking possibilities with this kind of technology (which, amusingly enough, could be thwarted by wearing foil), implanted and ingested sensors fill some of the main voids in medical security, namely the current failure to treat chronic illnesses such as diabetes and obesity, as well as the communications breakdown between doctor and patient ("where do you feel the pain?" Is it a stinging or a burning pain?"). Given enough time, the sensors themselves will improve, miniaturize, and drop in cost, and once that happens, medicine itself will change dramatically. It's far too early to call off the parade.
And it's not like the supposedly HIPAA-obscured records hospitals keep aren't enough to identify a patient. However, IT security in the field of technology is beyond the scope of the article, no?
Which, I am sure, makes you the leading expert on gay people in this thread. I can't speak for the honesty of this particular anonymous poster, but I, for one, don't care. The argument that she presented was that gays should refrain from discrimination (even rightful discrimination) because it undermines the gay rights movement as a whole. I can't disagree with that one bit. After all, was Martin Luther King Junior's message not more powerful than Malcolm X's? The ideal way to combat bigotry is not to become as jaded and militant as the people you're fighting against, that's counter-productive. You elevate yourself above the level of your moral enemy. After all, the goal of anyone in the gay rights movement is not to prove that they are right, it is to convince others to support their cause. To lash out at those who lashed out at your cause is not the best way to do that.
I like your title because "controlling the uncontrollable" is precisely the misguided intent of DRM and copyright, both of which become completely outdated with the expansion and proliferation of the Internet. Fortunately for those of us who don't rely on digital media for a living, providing purely digital (or even in some cases digitizable, as is the case with CDs) content is no longer a sustainable practice, with or without DRM. Without DRM, there is no advantage to providing content for pay, as your product is worth absolutely nothing in the digital world. With DRM, there is in fact a disadvantage to doing so-- The customer has to deal with DRM, even after paying for it! In both cases, the customer gains nothing by paying for a digital product, and in the latter case the customer actually loses some of the conveniences of infinite copyability. Either way, the customer is better served pirating the information, but there are certain things the original provider can make that give the customer incentives to buy the product, which is the direction the entire media industry is headed, whether it knows it or not.
The entire way pay-TV companies operate is based off of outdated business practices that are crippled by the Internet. With the ability to stream content at will, networks as they exist fail to provide a useful service, and scheduled-content TV programs are having trouble retaining steady viewership. Consumers have decided that sitting through commercials in equal proportion to content isn't very enjoyable, and now that there are options that don't require the customer to sit through them, the customers are going to leave in favor of those options. It's coming on time for those pay-TV companies to adapt to a business model that suits the customer or die out.
NASA shares its woes with every new project, technology, or system coming out of a government organization: It requires budget approval from someone else, usually the U.S. Congress in their everlasting budget talks, and those budgets can be changed during the course of research. Until one of those conditions is changed, the progress coming from NASA, DARPA, and every other research organization in the country will be crippled beyond recognition by bureaucrats aiming to slash budgets. The Republicans do it because it looks good when they decrease government spending, and the Democrats do it because it looks good when they decrease defense spending. It's all too fitting that one of the few things both sides of the aisle can agree on is one that neither party understands.
Antibacterial soap is a problem because it's used by such a high number of people, and (the kicker) it ends up in sewage systems because of its very nature. Coupled with the fact that it's not very good at its job to begin with, it's better that antibacterial soaps fall off the market. In that case, people might learn to wash their hands correctly rather than just running their hands under the water and assuming their soap will kill all the germs. It's hard to argue against the impact of agricultural antibiotics on the development of antibiotic-resistant illnesses, but hurting antibacterial soaps isn't a step in the wrong direction.
It seems that we've hit five different levels of people completely missing the point of the previous comment. The real discussion to be had here hinges around the question of whether this technology built for fighter planes can be effective on the ground and at low speed, whereas you're arguing about whether airplanes land at a certain altitude or not, and about the semantics surrounding the word "generally". The purpose of discussion is to learn, not to assert your intellectual dominance over the first person who says something "wrong" near you.
The trick to Steam's success isn't that it provides 'convenient' DRM. It doesn't. Steam doesn't allow client-free downloads and it becomes markedly more difficult to use without a steady Internet connection. But Steam makes up for this by giving the users a couple services that improve the overall experience. First off, Steam has automatic updates run through a single program. That's something that you can't get by pirating any of the games. Secondly, Steam Workshop, for the few games it's actually implemented in (Skyrim and Portal are the success stories), allows access to something fairly useful and convenient for modding games. Then, when you add in Steam Sales, easier installation and add-on installation, and verified access to online portions of games, it's more obvious that Steam isn't just a way to download games. Installers like it in the past never got off the ground because they failed to give a real tangible addition to the games it sold. That's the same reason Origin will never really get off the ground (instead of giving the users something they want, it forces them to download a bloated useless program to use what they already bought without providing any new service whatsoever). If all it did was download games, nobody would use it, because with the slightest bit of work and know-how, you can do the same thing without it for free. What Steam does right is add just enough of a reward to players to keep them coming back. It's a lesson that other companies might try to learn if they want to stave off the 'threat' of piracy in the future.
The problem with DRM is that it's inherently the opposite of everything good about computing. The Internet in particular is nothing if not a near-infinite collection of bits and bytes that can be copied and shared at will; in other words, the information superhighway we've been talking about for years. DRM proposes to solve one problem by introducing more problems. The problem is, since information on the Internet is infinitely copyable, none of it should have any inherent value. Finite demand divided by infinite supply equals zero. Trying to solve this by artificially limiting the supply, which is what copy-protection naturally does, limits what the end user can do with the product in a few ways that have been expanded upon by a lot of people who know more about the matter than I. Mainly, the dilemma is that you cannot keep people from copying something illegally without keeping people from copying it legally. Copyability being one of the distinct advantages data has over every other medium since the beginning of written records, this is an issue. By causing customers that disadvantage, you make it measurably better for a potential buyer to simply download a cracked version of your 'good', to pirate it. That way, the customer bypasses copy protection and can do as he pleases with whatever he just downloaded, which he couldn't do with the protected version. This obviously isn't a good idea. You might notice that some software has disadvantages to using pirated versions. One main disadvantage is that you aren't able to get automatically-updated versions of the software after the fact, and another is that you aren't entitled to using certain services, such as the case with pirated video games. The reason for this, and the answer to the piracy conundrum, is that both are services rather than goods. Updates to software provide something that was once impossible to a consumer, the steady improvement and future-proofing of their purchase for the foreseeable future. An antivirus software can adapt to growing security risks, a video game can update to take advantage of new computing technology (and the users' wishes, which is even more important), and countless other products can see huge improvements in their value by adding regular updates as a service, rather than a good. Access to online services like EA's online servers, for example, does the same thing in a different manner, giving the consumer a service rather than a worthless, infinitely-copyable good. You might notice that Netflix is built on this model. In exchange for a strikingly low monthly fee, the customer gets access (a service) to every movie and television show Netflix can get the rights to, in a way that takes up no storage space (an advantage over piracy) and now even provides access to proprietary shows that don't exist on the more traditional TV networks. Netflix doesn't need DRM because they don't sell movies. They provide access to a movie-watching service, and even in the case that a cracker gave access to a way to download movies from Netflix's servers directly, it wouldn't change anything about what Netflix does. It doesn't invalidate what they sell.
To put it simply (in our internet-speak, tl;dr), the Internet is enough to tear down the existence of information as a good, and will give rise to the industry of information as a service. And of course, the industries affected will resist at every turn along the way.
That's neither possible nor beneficial. There is no inherent problem with firearm ownership, and taking them away from the general public would cause more issues than it'd solve. The real problems causing gun crime, gang violence and the inept state of mental health treatment, should be the target of federal action if anything.
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By mixing, tweaking, sampling, and matching pieces of music together, a skilled artist can make something that equals more than the sum of its parts. If you're looking for examples, take DJ Shadow, El-P, or RJD2. Listening to an album by either artist, it's not even necessarily apparent that you're listening to song 1+song 2, it's music in its own right. I don't know how they do it, but it's definitely not to be underestimated.
This guy is apparently not into turntablism, for which I pity him.
I entirely agree that BMI is a flawed system. It doesn't pretend to be an absolutely foolproof statistic, either. Body fat percentage is more indicative of overall health, of course, but the main issue with using body fat by ratio is that it's much harder to measure accurately. And that's a recurring theme within medicine, especially the types of medicine that focus on improving the overall health of the patient, rather than simply finding a problem to solve. It's a problem that implanted and ingested sensors will solve rather than exacerbate, because they allow for more accurate measurement in an easier, more constant manner.
I'd suggest E.S. Posthumus. It's purely digital, but they were pretty good at what they did. Sadly, all the tracks are too short.
It really doesn't "fall short" in any case. Digital tools are tools nonetheless, and equally capable of transferring emotion to a sonic medium. There is plenty of 'digital' music that does so consistently, it's just a matter of finding it.
You're underestimating a synthesizer. Take a look at a Moog sometime. There's a lot of knobs and dials, and they all do something (and most of them do something that was nearly impossible with any other instrument invented). A saxophone can't gradually alter its entire timber mid-phrase, the closest wind instruments have are the various kinds of mute, each limited in its ability in a way a synthesizer isn't. The electric guitar is the closest, because using different digital and analog pedals one can achieve a massive range of effects, in much the same way a synthesizer does. And, may I ask you to remember what the common reaction was to the invention of the electric guitar? Much the same as the modern reaction of so-called 'purists' to the popularization of sampling, synthesizing, and digital production via software. The fact of the matter is, they are no longer able to be looked at as more or less than each other. They are simply different ways of making art, and each is capable of truly amazing things.
The same thing applies to the waves of digital music produced for things like raves. To quote one observer at the Globe and Mail 'So now we know why Deadmau5 and Daft Punk wear helmets when they perform. Everybody is digging the music, but no one is dancing. It is a sad development; the headgear of the maestros is there to mask their tears.'
No, it doesn't apply to "the waves of digital music produced for raves". Firstly, the rave scene died in the 90's, but it appears that you're not actually referring to a rave, you're talking about a concert by a musician whose methods you don't understand. Go see any decent house, dubstep, or techno artist play, and suddenly it's apparent that the quote you referenced is completely wrong, at least in the context in which you're using it. You can get a crowd moving with a Macintosh, it's not that difficult.
Will the live performance of instrumental musicians also become a thing of the past?
No, it won't.. Look to the same examples to see evidence that musicians without vocalists are actually becoming far more popular. And if you're trying to insinuate that a DJ isn't an 'instrumental' artist, you're wrong. A pair of turntables is an instrument just as a guitar is, and a performance using one requires just as much 'musicianship' as with any other instrument.
As is the case with most technological advancement, it will benefit the vast majority of cases while being detrimental to a vast minority of cases. If anything, false positives will be a bigger issue than false negatives, as is the case with most sensor systems (such as in security). More important is that implantable sensors don't do anything other than replacing non-implantable sensors. You can have a series of sensors monitor your body temperature, which might have very important implications in early-warning diagnosis of many diseases in a way that even the patient will likely not realize. The same is the case with this sensor, which allows for the same kind of detection of certain kinds of cancer.
What people tend to be afraid of is going to a doctor when they "know" something is wrong, only to be turned down because their temperature is fine and pain surveys come back inconclusive (As happens to a staggering number of hypochondriacs daily). The issue is, the 'standard' setting for sensors is never 'normal', because 'normal' is never zero. If a sensor breaks or turns off, or even if it reads a constant value looped indefinitely (contrasting against the otherwise-dynamic readings a working sensor would return), that will obviously be a problem with the sensor, and a doctor won't be fooled.
Because in the context of the machine, it makes sense. TCS and stability control are fairly useful for city driving, but they limit what an expert driver can do with a car. Since the Carrera GT is meant for expert drivers, and it's suited to track performance more than daily driving, its not really beneficial. Of course, people are going to buy the Carrera GT to use it as a daily driver, and most of those people aren't experts, but that isn't to say the car is inherently dangerous-- Only that those drivers are dangerous.
Don't underestimate the average American. By doing so, you threaten to fall victim to the fallacies you belittle in them. It's easy to elevate your beliefs above everybody else's, but that's neither right nor beneficial to anybody. I think if you'd give people more of a chance, you might notice that you're not the only one fed up with being lied to.
Yes, they definitely think they do. Rather, I would guess that it's part of the deal Netflix has with its content providers, who would otherwise be staying up nights about the possibility of people downloading movies that they are supposed to be streaming. Not that it's foolproof, as any kid with a video card and FRAPS can attest, or that there's a bit of Netflix content that can't be pirated elsewhere. In short, yes, Netflix has DRM. But, they don't need DRM, and I'm certain that their service wouldn't lose much from providing HTML5 streaming. The MPAA members might have an aneurysm, though, which would probably end up hurting Netflix indirectly.
I disagree with the notion that "it'd be hard to convince people" to ingest medical sensors. Perhaps blood-based sensors would fall prey to that kind of thinking, but those aren't quite possible as of yet. Although a certain number of so-called skeptics will be eager to outline the GPS-tracking possibilities with this kind of technology (which, amusingly enough, could be thwarted by wearing foil), implanted and ingested sensors fill some of the main voids in medical security, namely the current failure to treat chronic illnesses such as diabetes and obesity, as well as the communications breakdown between doctor and patient ("where do you feel the pain?" Is it a stinging or a burning pain?"). Given enough time, the sensors themselves will improve, miniaturize, and drop in cost, and once that happens, medicine itself will change dramatically. It's far too early to call off the parade.
And it's not like the supposedly HIPAA-obscured records hospitals keep aren't enough to identify a patient. However, IT security in the field of technology is beyond the scope of the article, no?
Which, I am sure, makes you the leading expert on gay people in this thread. I can't speak for the honesty of this particular anonymous poster, but I, for one, don't care. The argument that she presented was that gays should refrain from discrimination (even rightful discrimination) because it undermines the gay rights movement as a whole. I can't disagree with that one bit. After all, was Martin Luther King Junior's message not more powerful than Malcolm X's? The ideal way to combat bigotry is not to become as jaded and militant as the people you're fighting against, that's counter-productive. You elevate yourself above the level of your moral enemy. After all, the goal of anyone in the gay rights movement is not to prove that they are right, it is to convince others to support their cause. To lash out at those who lashed out at your cause is not the best way to do that.
Perhaps it's not the people's opinions on the law, but instead their lying and misleading that Jorge here dislikes?
I like your title because "controlling the uncontrollable" is precisely the misguided intent of DRM and copyright, both of which become completely outdated with the expansion and proliferation of the Internet. Fortunately for those of us who don't rely on digital media for a living, providing purely digital (or even in some cases digitizable, as is the case with CDs) content is no longer a sustainable practice, with or without DRM. Without DRM, there is no advantage to providing content for pay, as your product is worth absolutely nothing in the digital world. With DRM, there is in fact a disadvantage to doing so-- The customer has to deal with DRM, even after paying for it! In both cases, the customer gains nothing by paying for a digital product, and in the latter case the customer actually loses some of the conveniences of infinite copyability. Either way, the customer is better served pirating the information, but there are certain things the original provider can make that give the customer incentives to buy the product, which is the direction the entire media industry is headed, whether it knows it or not.
The entire way pay-TV companies operate is based off of outdated business practices that are crippled by the Internet. With the ability to stream content at will, networks as they exist fail to provide a useful service, and scheduled-content TV programs are having trouble retaining steady viewership. Consumers have decided that sitting through commercials in equal proportion to content isn't very enjoyable, and now that there are options that don't require the customer to sit through them, the customers are going to leave in favor of those options. It's coming on time for those pay-TV companies to adapt to a business model that suits the customer or die out.
NASA shares its woes with every new project, technology, or system coming out of a government organization: It requires budget approval from someone else, usually the U.S. Congress in their everlasting budget talks, and those budgets can be changed during the course of research. Until one of those conditions is changed, the progress coming from NASA, DARPA, and every other research organization in the country will be crippled beyond recognition by bureaucrats aiming to slash budgets. The Republicans do it because it looks good when they decrease government spending, and the Democrats do it because it looks good when they decrease defense spending. It's all too fitting that one of the few things both sides of the aisle can agree on is one that neither party understands.
Antibacterial soap is a problem because it's used by such a high number of people, and (the kicker) it ends up in sewage systems because of its very nature. Coupled with the fact that it's not very good at its job to begin with, it's better that antibacterial soaps fall off the market. In that case, people might learn to wash their hands correctly rather than just running their hands under the water and assuming their soap will kill all the germs. It's hard to argue against the impact of agricultural antibiotics on the development of antibiotic-resistant illnesses, but hurting antibacterial soaps isn't a step in the wrong direction.
It seems that we've hit five different levels of people completely missing the point of the previous comment. The real discussion to be had here hinges around the question of whether this technology built for fighter planes can be effective on the ground and at low speed, whereas you're arguing about whether airplanes land at a certain altitude or not, and about the semantics surrounding the word "generally". The purpose of discussion is to learn, not to assert your intellectual dominance over the first person who says something "wrong" near you.
It's almost as if British English and American English are separate dialects. In which case arguing over which one is 'correct' is fairly useless, no?
The trick to Steam's success isn't that it provides 'convenient' DRM. It doesn't. Steam doesn't allow client-free downloads and it becomes markedly more difficult to use without a steady Internet connection. But Steam makes up for this by giving the users a couple services that improve the overall experience. First off, Steam has automatic updates run through a single program. That's something that you can't get by pirating any of the games. Secondly, Steam Workshop, for the few games it's actually implemented in (Skyrim and Portal are the success stories), allows access to something fairly useful and convenient for modding games. Then, when you add in Steam Sales, easier installation and add-on installation, and verified access to online portions of games, it's more obvious that Steam isn't just a way to download games. Installers like it in the past never got off the ground because they failed to give a real tangible addition to the games it sold. That's the same reason Origin will never really get off the ground (instead of giving the users something they want, it forces them to download a bloated useless program to use what they already bought without providing any new service whatsoever). If all it did was download games, nobody would use it, because with the slightest bit of work and know-how, you can do the same thing without it for free. What Steam does right is add just enough of a reward to players to keep them coming back. It's a lesson that other companies might try to learn if they want to stave off the 'threat' of piracy in the future.
The problem with DRM is that it's inherently the opposite of everything good about computing. The Internet in particular is nothing if not a near-infinite collection of bits and bytes that can be copied and shared at will; in other words, the information superhighway we've been talking about for years. DRM proposes to solve one problem by introducing more problems. The problem is, since information on the Internet is infinitely copyable, none of it should have any inherent value. Finite demand divided by infinite supply equals zero. Trying to solve this by artificially limiting the supply, which is what copy-protection naturally does, limits what the end user can do with the product in a few ways that have been expanded upon by a lot of people who know more about the matter than I. Mainly, the dilemma is that you cannot keep people from copying something illegally without keeping people from copying it legally. Copyability being one of the distinct advantages data has over every other medium since the beginning of written records, this is an issue. By causing customers that disadvantage, you make it measurably better for a potential buyer to simply download a cracked version of your 'good', to pirate it. That way, the customer bypasses copy protection and can do as he pleases with whatever he just downloaded, which he couldn't do with the protected version. This obviously isn't a good idea. You might notice that some software has disadvantages to using pirated versions. One main disadvantage is that you aren't able to get automatically-updated versions of the software after the fact, and another is that you aren't entitled to using certain services, such as the case with pirated video games. The reason for this, and the answer to the piracy conundrum, is that both are services rather than goods. Updates to software provide something that was once impossible to a consumer, the steady improvement and future-proofing of their purchase for the foreseeable future. An antivirus software can adapt to growing security risks, a video game can update to take advantage of new computing technology (and the users' wishes, which is even more important), and countless other products can see huge improvements in their value by adding regular updates as a service, rather than a good. Access to online services like EA's online servers, for example, does the same thing in a different manner, giving the consumer a service rather than a worthless, infinitely-copyable good. You might notice that Netflix is built on this model. In exchange for a strikingly low monthly fee, the customer gets access (a service) to every movie and television show Netflix can get the rights to, in a way that takes up no storage space (an advantage over piracy) and now even provides access to proprietary shows that don't exist on the more traditional TV networks. Netflix doesn't need DRM because they don't sell movies. They provide access to a movie-watching service, and even in the case that a cracker gave access to a way to download movies from Netflix's servers directly, it wouldn't change anything about what Netflix does. It doesn't invalidate what they sell. To put it simply (in our internet-speak, tl;dr), the Internet is enough to tear down the existence of information as a good, and will give rise to the industry of information as a service. And of course, the industries affected will resist at every turn along the way.
That's neither possible nor beneficial. There is no inherent problem with firearm ownership, and taking them away from the general public would cause more issues than it'd solve. The real problems causing gun crime, gang violence and the inept state of mental health treatment, should be the target of federal action if anything.
Besides, if they weren't going to turn around and sell the data to the people they took it from, would it really be Google?