Re:W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns
by dsacco on Wednesday September 20, 2017 @01:24PM
(#15296163)
This is an excellent comment, to which I might add: framing a persuasive argument based on the position that DRM (or nearly anything) is an unequivocal bad is very nearly guaranteed to be untenable and inherently inconsistent.
If you truly believe that DRM is harmful in general, you need to construct an argument that appeals to educating people about which practical freedoms they care about will be lost. At that point you need to accept that they might not care about those freedoms.
But if you construct an argument from the axiom that users shouldn't introduce anything into their systems they can't reasonably control, you've fundamentally isolated almost everyone who you want to convince. Of those remaining to listen, most will typically already be on your side end evangelizing the same thing. In order to be consistent, arguing from a core axiom of user freedom and choice requires sacrificing things like hardware security modules, which are a giant leap forward for user security. You can have the absolute freedom to do anything if you'd like, but you might find that there are relatively few ways to apply that freedom if you do.
The alternative is a balanced approach: you don't start from an axiom that users need to be inherently free, and that some amount of tradeoff in freedom is beneficial and desirable. Then you go on to demonstrate why DRM in particular is bad in general. But this is a much weaker position in general, and framed this way you'll have fewer people to argue with.
If you truly believe that DRM is harmful in general, you need to construct an argument that appeals to educating people about which practical freedoms they care about will be lost. At that point you need to accept that they might not care about those freedoms.
But if you construct an argument from the axiom that users shouldn't introduce anything into their systems they can't reasonably control, you've fundamentally isolated almost everyone who you want to convince. Of those remaining to listen, most will typically already be on your side end evangelizing the same thing. In order to be consistent, arguing from a core axiom of user freedom and choice requires sacrificing things like hardware security modules, which are a giant leap forward for user security. You can have the absolute freedom to do anything if you'd like, but you might find that there are relatively few ways to apply that freedom if you do.
The alternative is a balanced approach: you don't start from an axiom that users need to be inherently free, and that some amount of tradeoff in freedom is beneficial and desirable. Then you go on to demonstrate why DRM in particular is bad in general. But this is a much weaker position in general, and framed this way you'll have fewer people to argue with.