[ox-en] Digital Rights consequences
- From: "tOM Trottier" <Tom Abacurial.com>
- Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 01:10:57 -0400
The digital rights people use the warm wooly words "trusted" and
"security" when what they really mean is
"We want to control what you can do. We don't trust you. Laws aren't
enough. We must have our hands at your throats at all times."
Their "trusted" "secure" systems become far less trustworthy, secure,
efficient, or practical for the public than open source alternatives.
"Unlike some technical controversies, the facts of the DRMP [Digital
Rights Management Passport] debate can be easily determined [by] non-
experts. The trade press has seen through the "security" claims and a
little reading will provide a great deal of information. But the
definitive determination is to ask vendors to share the risks of DRMP.
Will vendors of DRMP infected software and hardware warrant that DRM
agents or their hardware assistants will not cause or contribute to any
safety or security failures? Will they provide a warranty that DRM agents
cannot interfere with your fair use rights or your rights to use your own
data or rights to use purchased digital data? It's easy to say that DRM
passports are reliable and non- intrusive and that articles such as this
one are alarmist. Accepting liability is something else. Will your vendor
indemnify you against any losses due to DRMP? If the answer to the
question on indemnification is, "no", the risks to purchasers are obvious.
The potential gains are not obvious."
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT7225637142.html
This article has excellent examples of the dangers of enforcing digital
rights in hardware or software from a practitioner in the field. It seems
polemic at the start, but the effect of computers and networks enforcing
licenses on data and programs becomes more and more scary. "Nothing can go
wrong... go wrong... go wrong...."
The costs of DRM are not just in making the chips or programs. The costs
are not just in restricting the rights and freedoms of the public. The
costs are also in making computers and devices even more unreliable,
inefficient, awkward, unusable, and dangerous.
tOM
------- Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur -----------------
,__@ tOM A. Trottier [PHONE NUMBER REMOVED] fax:231-6115
_-\_<, 758 Albert St.,Ottawa ON Canada K1R 7V8
(*)/'(*) ICQ:57647974 N45.412 W75.714
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Laws are the spider's webs which,
if anything small falls into them they ensnare it,
but large things break through and escape.
--Anacharsis, Scythia (~600 BCE)
_______________________
http://www.oekonux.org/