DRM will not be legislated

jamesd at echeque.com jamesd at echeque.com
Mon Jul 8 18:00:48 PDT 2002


    --
On 9 Jul 2002 at 1:01, Anonymous wrote:
> If DRM hardware and software are widely available, they reason, 
> it will be that much easier to get legislation passed to make 
> them mandatory. [....]
>
> This argument makes superficial sense, but it ultimately 
> contradicts itself on one major point: if DRM is so successful 
> and widely used as would be necessary for its mandate to be 
> low-cost, then there is no need to require it!

Voluntary DRM can never stop piracy.  With voluntary DRM, people 
can break once on one machine, then run the latest Napster 
replacement on the every machine on the internet in non DRM mode, 
and copy that file that was ripped on one machine, to every 
machine.

Voluntary DRM is only useful to the content industry as a stepping 
stone to compulsory DRM

Voluntary DRM is only useful to the industry to reach the point 
where they can say "Only copyright pirates, terrorists, drug
trafficers, child pornographers, tax evaders, and money launderers
need to run their machines in non DRM mode." 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
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