Why not give the market a chance? Company A provides the data with Draconian DRM restrictions; company B gives you more flexibility in what you do. All else being equal, people will prefer company B. So they can charge more. In this way a balance will be reached depending on how much people really value this kind of flexibility and how much they are willing to pay for it. You and I don't get to decide, the people who are making the decisions about what content to buy will decide. That assumes there is a competitive market. Supposing you need Microsoft Office. you probably don't actually care
On Mon, 5 Aug 2002, AARG!Anonymous wrote: that much if you use MS Office, Sun Staroffice, Ability write or whatever - but you need to interoperate with companies that *do* use Microsoft Office. If you don't like the Microsoft version of Microsoft Office because of its draconian insistance on running *only* on a Trusted machine with a Trusted Operating System, how do you proceed? particularly as it would be trivial to make reverse-engineered interoperable office suites illegal under the DMCA? Music, video, text, computer programs - all are governed by legally-enforced monopoly rights of patent and/or copyright, the latter continually extended to prevent micky mouse ever becoming public domain - and all meaning there is but a single source you can obtain whatever it is you need or want from, so you either have to take whatever restrictions are imposed (fair use being invalid in a DMCA world) or do without.