Google's software mistreats or harms the user

Re:Google's software mistreats or harms the user by spookthesunset on Tuesday August 20, 2019 @04:12PM (#20751538)

These kinds of reductionist arguments don't hold much water in the real world. Using arguments like this you can justify ransomware--after all ransomware is just CPU instructions running on a computer. That is what computers do is run instructions. Therefore, it is totally okay if the instructions happen to encrypt the entire contents of a disk and prevent the user from accessing it until they pay money.

Here in meatspace, we have this notion of ownership and property rights. DRM is a mechanism to protect those rights. They may not be perfect, and they might not always make much business sense but that is their intent.

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Re:Google's software mistreats or harms the user by johannes1234321 on Tuesday August 20, 2019 @04:20PM (#20751631)

The ransomware doesn't do what I as owner of the computer want and nothing which serves me a purpose. The comparison doesn't work.

If you look for a comparison: DRM is like a book publisher printing books on special paper which prevents copying and which can only be read in a specific angle so I can't easily take notes containing quotes from the book. All to protect those rights. (Edit: actually that example is missing a piece - you need special reading glasses to be able to read it, that's what DRM is doing on my machine)

And yes - Napster was an issue for the music industry. Suddenly their content was there for free and easily accessible. But then there was Apple, giving music away DRM-free with even better usability and for an acceptable fee.

[ Parent | on HN ]