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A comment on Flash Player is about to stop working on Windows 10. Parent comment

Re:Flash Player is about to stop working on Windows 10 by studius on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @09:15PM (#25588838)
> Regardless of whether you like Flash, this should be yet another ominous warning that you do not really own your computer anymore.

This is definitely true with regard to applications and services.

People give rms a hard time for going on about free software, but he saw this coming.

"One assumption is that software companies have an unquestionable natural right to own software and thus have power over all its users. (If this were a natural right, then no matter how much harm it does to the public, we could not object.) Interestingly, the U.S. Constitution and legal tradition reject this view; copyright is not a natural right, but an artificial government-imposed monopoly that limits the users’ natural right to copy." -rms[1]

I don't suggest jumping into the deep-end with free software mentality without full consideration.

However, Google Play Music went under recently[2] with all of the content that people bought becoming potentially unavailable, so it's worth thinking about how much we don't own.

[1]- https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fsfs/rms-essays.pdf

[2]- https://9to5google.com/2020/12/03/google-play-music-dead/

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Flash Player is about to stop working on Windows 10 by matheusmoreira on Thursday December 31, 2020 @03:14AM (#25590676)
Corporations in general just like to own and control everything. Just look at the mess that is intellectual property rights. There's essentially no limits to what they will delude themselves into believing they can own.
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Re:Flash Player is about to stop working on Windows 10 by 1vuio0pswjnm7 on Thursday December 31, 2020 @04:31AM (#25591102)
Who starts corporations? Who hires lawyers to try to protect intellectual proprty rights? It all starts with one or a few people exercising free will. To take a more common example than Bill Gates and friends, something as seemingly "non-corporate" as Pi-Hole has become a private corporation and "owns" a trademark. Regardless of reasons, it is what it is -- individuals poised to enforce "rights" against, to block, others. The "delusion" is quite contagious. Not disagreeing with the comment, just pointing out that these problems emanate from wilful participation in the delusion by individual persons.
[ Parent | on HN ]