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

Jesse Pollard
2003-04-30T14:37:52Z

On Wednesday 30 April 2003 08:59, Larry McVoy wrote:
[snip]
> Your post shows that you think that the reaction is bad and you even say
> that the reaction is likely. You vigourously disagree with my conclusions
> as to why the reaction is happening, I see that. OK, so let's try it
> with a question rather than a statement: why are things like the DMCA and
> DRM happening? It isn't the open source guys pushing those, obviously,
> it's the corporations. So why are they doing it?

To force people to buy their media of course.

The data (most of it) is nearly zero cost (between 1 to around 8%). They can't
stop you from copying the data. They just want to make that copy unusable.

That forces you to buy their media.

> Your answer has to be interesting because it seems to me that they are
> doing it to protect their products, their product is sometimes content,
> sometimes programs, sometimes both. An answer which says that open source
> is not part of the cause also says that open source is irrelevant.
>
> You can't be both a force and not a force.

Philosophically, you can, provided that the direction of the forces are
perpendicular.