People will know about DRM, they will know as much as RIAA/MPAA and mass media allow them to know. Obeying the DMCA will be presented as a moral obligation, a duty of each citizen. The opposite will be labeled as immoral, unfashionable and antisocial.
Quality was never valued above trends by the "public". Why would people hear pirated MP3s at 128kbps, with all the distortion introduced by the compression? Why are they willing to watch pirated videos of torturous quality, like the recent StarWars Ep.III rip? There's no use to reason with average users any more about technological benefits. People accept buggy software and crappy quality as a necessity, as an something inherent to the nature of programming. If someone presented a piece of software as crappy and unstable as Windows XP 10 years ago, he would be ridiculed. Now, with every Windows Update you install, you computing experience "becomes more and more easy, stable and secure", thanks to Microsoft's "dedication" to its customers. Oh my.
I am afraid that the contemporary "public" values only what mass media presents as valuable. Think: organic food, hybrid cars, iPods, even the firefox campaign. Unless something is popular, it is not viewed as good by the majority. I have to admit that Microsoft does have certain control over the future of computing.
Soon, very soon, the newspapers and "entertainment (celebrity) magazines", then TV news will be talking about poor artists and those evil anti-social criminals who dare to object global proliferation of DRM. Meanwhile, magazines like "Popular Science" (an oxymoron within its name), "Scientific American" and various business magazines will convince the semi-intellectual remains about the wonderful future of "secure computing".
Concerned citizens will call their congressmen, urging them to punish the evil hackers who strip their favorite celebrities of their means of living. Laws will be passed in US. Soon, UK and Europe will comply. Computer's transformation from a computing device into a digital jukebox will be complete.
I may be a bit apocalyptic about these predictions but, unless Windows has popular alternatives, this is the direction we're heading. Alas, it's all about the PR, it's all about the politics.
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People will know about DRM, they will know as much as RIAA/MPAA and mass media allow them to know. Obeying the DMCA will be presented as a moral obligation, a duty of each citizen. The opposite will be labeled as immoral, unfashionable and antisocial. Quality was never valued above trends by the "public". Why would people hear pirated MP3s at 128kbps, with all the distortion introduced by the compression? Why are they willing to watch pirated videos of torturous quality, like the recent StarWars Ep.III rip? There's no use to reason with average users any more about technological benefits. People accept buggy software and crappy quality as a necessity, as an something inherent to the nature of programming. If someone presented a piece of software as crappy and unstable as Windows XP 10 years ago, he would be ridiculed. Now, with every Windows Update you install, you computing experience "becomes more and more easy, stable and secure", thanks to Microsoft's "dedication" to its customers. Oh my. I am afraid that the contemporary "public" values only what mass media presents as valuable. Think: organic food, hybrid cars, iPods, even the firefox campaign. Unless something is popular, it is not viewed as good by the majority. I have to admit that Microsoft does have certain control over the future of computing. Soon, very soon, the newspapers and "entertainment (celebrity) magazines", then TV news will be talking about poor artists and those evil anti-social criminals who dare to object global proliferation of DRM. Meanwhile, magazines like "Popular Science" (an oxymoron within its name), "Scientific American" and various business magazines will convince the semi-intellectual remains about the wonderful future of "secure computing". Concerned citizens will call their congressmen, urging them to punish the evil hackers who strip their favorite celebrities of their means of living. Laws will be passed in US. Soon, UK and Europe will comply. Computer's transformation from a computing device into a digital jukebox will be complete. I may be a bit apocalyptic about these predictions but, unless Windows has popular alternatives, this is the direction we're heading. Alas, it's all about the PR, it's all about the politics.