DRM and Linux
Posted on July 8, 2006 under Random Rants.
Ok, last week I read an article on CNet according to which, some executive at RealNetworks warned at the LinuxWorld event, that if Linux wouldn`t incorporate DRM in the kernel it would risk being excluded from the consumer operating systems market...
My first reaction was: Are you freaking kidding me
First of all: Linux is and will be popular in the consumer op sys market BECAUSE it does not contain any kind of half backed ideas of DRM.
Second of all, if I remember correctly out of computers 101 (no it`s not a course, it`s a metaphor) any kind of legal and non-legal music or multimedia content needs to be downloaded in some form or another to your personal computer/gizmo... because that device needs to have the stream of bits and bytes that tell him what to play. So, if the end user has to have the generic file (whatever format it is) on his/her computer/gizmo to play it, regardless whether he has to be online or not, there is no way to prevent the end user from doing whatever he wants with that piece of multimedia.
You can make it hard on him to do it, and that effectively results in preventing Average Joe from doing it. But on the other hand with any kind of information being easily accessible by means of a quick online search, anybody that is Average Joe enough wouldn`t be interested in replicating / backing up / converting multimedia in the first place. Everybody else would use one of the million ways to circumvent DRM and get on with their lives...
So why the heat about it? Please, please, please stop annoying half of the Internet population with apocaliptic garbage like that. Bottom line is DRM is not the holy grail of preventing intelectual property rights infringements and never will be, until it prevents 100% of infringements, which is impossible with the current approach!
So instead of making ridiculous claims, how about putting your R & D teams to work and figure out a better way to do it, before having all the world chase a ghost...
My first reaction was: Are you freaking kidding me
First of all: Linux is and will be popular in the consumer op sys market BECAUSE it does not contain any kind of half backed ideas of DRM.
Second of all, if I remember correctly out of computers 101 (no it`s not a course, it`s a metaphor) any kind of legal and non-legal music or multimedia content needs to be downloaded in some form or another to your personal computer/gizmo... because that device needs to have the stream of bits and bytes that tell him what to play. So, if the end user has to have the generic file (whatever format it is) on his/her computer/gizmo to play it, regardless whether he has to be online or not, there is no way to prevent the end user from doing whatever he wants with that piece of multimedia.
You can make it hard on him to do it, and that effectively results in preventing Average Joe from doing it. But on the other hand with any kind of information being easily accessible by means of a quick online search, anybody that is Average Joe enough wouldn`t be interested in replicating / backing up / converting multimedia in the first place. Everybody else would use one of the million ways to circumvent DRM and get on with their lives...
So why the heat about it? Please, please, please stop annoying half of the Internet population with apocaliptic garbage like that. Bottom line is DRM is not the holy grail of preventing intelectual property rights infringements and never will be, until it prevents 100% of infringements, which is impossible with the current approach!
So instead of making ridiculous claims, how about putting your R & D teams to work and figure out a better way to do it, before having all the world chase a ghost...