> It's a logical error to say that DRM itself is evil when some of the instances of it are evil.
All of the instances of DRM are evil, because all of the instances of DRM'ed stuff prevents practical and unlimited sharing.
In the digital world, any limitations on copying bits are akin to virtual restraints and locking information away. It prevents you from doing anything else than what the golden prison allows.
Well, to get his money from under his mattress would require you to break into his home. That's different from him storing his money under your mattress.
The statement "there's not much to complaint about when those 3rd parties f* up, if you used them voluntarily." taken in general can refer to pretty much everything we encounter in everyday life. There are lot of implicit contracts made, and breaking some of them could be recognized in court (there's the concept of acting in bad faith).
In this particular case, JenLaw et al. have all the rights to be mad at Apple because of the broken ToS/implicit contract that said "this is my data, it's only backed up and will not be shown to third parties". Whether or not they have shown practical wisdom by using the service is a whole another matter.
That's basically the crux of disagreements around the "victim blaming" concept. People confuse two different things here - morality of whether something should be done, and the probability it will happen in practice. If I get mugged under the bridge in the middle of the night, I'm not morally at fault for being mugged (it's something that shouldn't be done), but I also haven't shown practical wisdom by going alone at night under the bridge in dangerous area (by doing so I increased the probability it will happen to me).
As far as I remember though, the "breach" was not on Apple's part but on the victims who chose weak passwords; can we blame Apple for this ? Except maybe for a lack of forceful education ?
The original sentence becomes "Jennifer Lawrence shouldn't have stored sensitive information externally without using a minimum of good security measures" in this vision.
> As far as I remember though, the "breach" was not on Apple's part but on the victims who chose weak passwords; can we blame Apple for this? Except maybe for a lack of forceful education?
In this case I guess we can blame Apple only for the "lack of forceful education"/crappy security ideas (security questions in 21th century, really?).
There is one funny thing about the Fappening - there was this movie[0] released few months ago, that featured a couple making a sex tape that ends up accidentally distributed to their extended families and friends thanks to iPads and cloud backup. The best line from the trailer:
- It went up! It went up to the cloud!
- And you can't get it down from the cloud?
- NOBODY UNDERSTANDS THE CLOUD! It's a fucking mystery!
Hah. You say that now. And then the bank messes up, and your savings account is empty. You're not going to complain? I think not. I think you're going to be screaming at the top of your lungs, calling lawyers, and so on.
Indeed, if you come from the assumption that it's evil to limit the sharing of information/software, then DRM is evil, because that's the exact purpose of it. However, in this case, login systems, encryption, etc also evil because they prevent the sharing of information. Speaking of which, why do you lock information away from Adobe? Also, pass me your HN password, please :-)
But even if DRM's purpose is evil, it's still doesn't invalidate my argument: that it's a tool for peaceful enforcement of contracts (something you might not like), the exact opposite of the state's violent enforcement of contracts. The latter is the problem in Stallman's story, not the former.
Hmm, I was talking about DRM in the context of published information.
Obviously, in the case of private and/or sensitive information, you don't release anything to the public, so I'm not sure the protections (login system, etc...) can still fit in the definition of DRM.
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a class of technologies that are used by
hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders, and individuals with
the intent to control the use of digital content and devices after sale.
With publications, you give an access to other people (a restricted one if DRM is involved). It's not the same as not giving access to anyone but yourself.
The argument of copyright is that 'published' information is not public. It is still owned by its creator (or more often by one of the corporations that employ them), you just get a very limited license to do certain things with it, like reading it and maybe creating personal backups, but not other things, such as sharing it with others, either for free or as part of a commercial venture.
This distinction between owning and licensing information didn't use to be necessary in the publisher's business model for popular culture, because the cost (and, equally importantly, the profit margin) of distribution was significant: authors made and continue to make far less than their publishers, with rare exceptions.
The cost of distribution of digital information is so low that consumers will do it for free (BitTorrent). And since the power of publishers primarily derives from their ability to distribute copies, that is what they attempt to preserve, even though they do a lot of other things that continue to be valuable in today's digital world, like financing and advertising. This (not entirely irrational) attempt to preserve a dated business model is in turn perceived by consumers as a clampdown on their rights, leading to a backlash to the established publishing industry and enabling the (so far limited) success of new services like Spotify and Netflix, which don't have to take into account any reconceived notions of what their business is. People associate licensing an ebook with buying a treebook, but they tend to associate streaming with borrowing a book in the library.
>People associate licensing an ebook with buying a treebook //
People don't just associate it. Companies offer e-books for sale. Amazon says "Kindle Purchase" and give a price for the e-book: that's a subtle sort of fraud if they really mean you can "Kindle license" and to offer a "licensing fee" rather than a price.
Companies want people to think they are purchasing stuff because otherwise people would be reluctant to "buy". Unfortunately the largest companies have been able to play this fraud long enough to establish the system; only now are people realising that what they thought they had bought doesn't technically belong to them and the rights they thought they had are not in place. Like I said, it's a subtle fraud.
What's more egregious is that the copyright deal has been corrupted. With DRM companies are saying their work will not enter the public domain eventually - that means they've failed to uphold their end of the copyright deal ... why then are the demos upholding their end, there is no compulsion to if the contract has already been broken.
There is no protection for works which have been crippled so they can not enter the public domain; the contract has gone. It would be good if the legal system could come in line with the reality of this situation.
Yes, locking private information is not DRM. But if you separate "private" information from "published" information, then for DRM to become [logically] evil, you should restate your claim about why is it evil to prevent unlimited sharing, because the generic "virtual restraints" on bits no longer works.
All of the instances of DRM are evil, because all of the instances of DRM'ed stuff prevents practical and unlimited sharing.
In the digital world, any limitations on copying bits are akin to virtual restraints and locking information away. It prevents you from doing anything else than what the golden prison allows.