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working on something not ultimately hindering your users

People who make DRM are paid by content producers, not content viewers. They're not hindering their users. They're doing what their users ask them to do. It's just that we aren't their users. If you want to influence DRM developers to stop making DRM, refuse to buy/view/stream DRM-protected media. Then they'll have to find new jobs because their customers will stop paying them.




Just to state the obvious: I've done this for all of my adult life. It's difficult, but possible. I buy my games on gog.com, mp3s (or flaacs) from hyperion-records.co.uk and I read either pdf or dead-tree media. I listen to the radio a lot and support my state-sponsored broadcasters in the two countries I split my time between, both of which are paid for by a license fee and produce material without DRM at all. I have a raspberry-pi based content box in my bedroom that will record legally free over-the-air digital TV (at 720p) and let me watch it later. I periodically write letters of complaint to broadcasters that provide online offerings only with Widevine.

I haven't bought a Sony product since their rootkit fiasco in about 2004. I remove the Widevine library from Chrome when I'm forced to use it, unclick the box that says "Play DRM" in Firefox, and don't really use Safari. At work, I challenge suppliers who use activation to provide us software without it, and I run entirely Linux-boxes.

Yes, I am one of those zealots. Yes, it makes life harder at times. Would I change it? No.


Thanks for the guide!


DRM screws over content producers just as much as users, if not more so. It creates a 'tragedy of the commons' situation throughout the content industries that ultimately hinders creators. Content creation benefits from openness as much as anything else, and DRM platforms are the opposite extreme to openness.


DRM is paid for the content distributors not content producers. The rent collectors who profit from the labour of others by manipulating the market to create an artificial scarcity of supply in the marketplace. It's a grift and those who develop the DRM software are in on the scam.


It's the same for anyone who sells software, or access to ANY data whatsoever.


He said "users," not clients or customers. You can say that users aren't DRM a coders' concern, but you can't say they aren't their users.


Why are you advocating for boycott on the product market, but not on the labour market?




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