Re: [OS:N:] RMS ON DRM

On Thu, 2003-08-14 at 11:49, James Michael DuPont wrote:
> As if magically ordered, RMS has just made statements on DRM that are
> relevant to this whole discussion : 
> http://www.ofb.biz/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=260
> 
> """"
> TRB: Awhile back Linus Torvalds said he wasn't really opposed to DRM
> technology being integrated into GNU/Linux and suggested that the GPL
> didn't forbid such.
> 
> RMS: The GNU GPL does not forbid DRM features as such, and it clearly
> has no effect on DRM in application programs that run on GNU/Linux,
> because application programs are not legally required to be GPL'd or
> even to be free software. But the GPL may put some limits on some of
> the changes in Linux (the kernel) that would be needed to include DRM
> support in Linux itself.
> 
> TRB: What does the FSF think about DRM -- especially for data such as
> e-books, articles, music, and so forth?
> 
> RMS: DRM is, in itself, an offense against the users' freedom.
> Secondarily it poses a danger to free software--the danger that free
> software will be entirely forbidden for important jobs such as reading
> a DVD or an e-book. So we are firmly against it on principle. 
> """"
> 
> So there you go. It looks like open-source-now is grasping with this
> problem, but it does not seem to bother some of you that it is not
> possible to make free software to handle these tasks.
> 
> The other alternative would be to make a free software interface to a
> DRM chip on the computer that handles such operations. That may be the
> only way to pay for these poor people's morgages. I wonder where to
> draw the line between software on silicon and software on disk, but
> that might be were we have to go in the long run.
I agree very much that DRM is an offense.  But the producers of the
product / book / whatever have the right to use it as long as they do
not take the right to not use it away from the rest of us.  I can choose
to not read the e-book based on the fact that I can not do it on the
products I have.  My loss?  Maybe but I do not think so.  If everybody
took this stance then the problem would go away on its own.  I saw a log
of copy protection schemes in the 80s.  It all failed because it was
just too much of a pain the ass for users and somebody else did it
without.

Johnnie

> 
> mike
> 
> 
> =====
> James Michael DuPont
> http://introspector.sourceforge.net/
> 
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