Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]

[Jon Portnoy <portnoy@tellink.net>]

On Sun, 27 Apr 2003, Larry McVoy wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 27, 2003 at 04:21:06PM +0200, Matthias Andree wrote:
> > It seems that the people who form the "market" (and buy shares, write
> > analyses, buy CDs/DVDs) need to be told the implications of buying
> > copy-protected material or material that enforces to boot only
> > particlular kernels or whatever.
> 
> This is in the "it's too late to fix it" category but here's my opinion
> about all this digital rights stuff.
> 
> There is much hand wringing and gnashing of teeth over the fact that
> the evil corporations are locking things up with DRM as well as various
> laws like the DMCA.  People talk about their "rights" being violated,
> about how awful this all is, etc, etc, etc.
> 
> What seems to be forgotten is that the people who are locking things up
> are the people who own those things and the people who are complaining
> are the people who got those things, illegally, for free.  There seems
> to be a wide spread feeling that whenever anything desirable comes along
> it is OK to take it if you want it.  Napster is a good example.  I don't
> like the record companies any better than anyone else but they do own
> the material and you either respect the rules or the record companies
> will lock it up and force you to respect the rules.
> 
> The open source community, in my opinion, is certainly a contributing
> factor in the emergence of the DMCA and DRM efforts.  This community
> thinks it is perfectly acceptable to copy anything that they find useful.
> Take a look at some of the recent BK flamewars and over and over you
> will see people saying "we'll clone it".   That's not unique to BK,
> it's the same with anything else which is viewed as useful.  And nobody
> sees anything wrong with that, or copying music, whatever.  "If it's
> useful, take it" is the attitude.

You're comparing illegally stealing something already made to making 
something that behaves similarly to something that exists?

> 
> This problem is pervasive, it's not just a handful of people.  Upon the
> advice of several of the leading kernel developers, I contacted Pavel's
> boss at SuSE and said "how about you nudge Pavel onto something more
> productive" and he said that he couldn't control Pavel.  That's nonsense
> and everyone knows that.  If one of my employees were doing something
> like that, it would be trivial to say "choose between your job and that".
> But Garloff just shrugged it off as not his problem.

Larry, why do you want other people to be as much of an apparent asshole 
as you are? When you're trying to get someone's boss to extort them into 
stopping a personal project, you're going way too far. You really feel 
_that_ threatened by Pavel's project that you feel a need to try to get 
leverage over Pavel via his boss?

> 
> Corporations are certainly watching things like our efforts with
> BitKeeper, as well as the other companies who are trying to play nice
> with the open source world.  What are they learning?  That if you don't
> lock it up, the open source world has no conscience, no respect, and will
> steal anything that isn't locked down.  Show me a single example of the
> community going "no, we can't take that, someone else did all the work
> to produce it, we didn't".  Good luck finding it.  Instead you get "hey,
> that's cool, let's copy it".  With no acknowledgement that the creation
> of the product took 100x the effort it takes to copy the product.

No conscience and no respect? Maybe you just have no respect for us. Maybe 
if you had respect for us, we'd respect you in return. Instead you're here 
ranting about how we're a bunch of thieves while you're trying to get 
everyone else to behave unethical and extort their employees. Wow, you're 
just a paragon of virtue, Larry. I wish we could all be nicer to wonderful 
people like you.

> 
> Do you think that corporations are going sit by and watch you do that and
> do nothing to stop you?  Of course they aren't, they have a strong self
> preservation instinct and they have the resources to apply to the problem.
> The DMCA, DRM, all that stuff is just the beginning.  You will respond
> with all sorts of clever hacks to get around it and they will respond
> with even more clever hacks to stop you.  They have both more resources
> and more at stake so they will win.

Why aren't they winning so far? They don't have more resources. You mean 
that they have more money (and more money at stake). Apparently judging by 
the fact that the RIAA, MPAA, et al aren't "winning," "our" clever hacks 
(who and what are you referring to here exactly?) are "winning."

"They have the guns, but we have the numbers"

> 
> The depressing thing is that it is so obvious to me that the corporations
> will win, they will protect themselves, they have the money to lobby the
> government to get the laws they want and build the technology they need.
> The more you push back the more locked up things will become.

Wow, I wish they'd get it over with. Are they just faking the current 
"losing" trend?