But that's the result, not the reason why it's sinister. It's sinister because it shifts from presumption of innocence to police state method of "all guilty by default". Like the Sony exec quoted in the first link above expressed it:
>>> The industry will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams... It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what... Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop this. We will develop technology that transcends the individual user. We will firewall Napster at source - we will block it at your cable company. We will block it at your phone company. We will block it at your ISP. We will firewall it at your PC... These strategies are being aggressively pursued because there is simply too much at stake.
And in practice it's always bad because it's not a theoretical "protection of content", but something actual running in your private digital space (your computer, your OS, your program), with the sole purpose of not trusting you and doing whatever (you usually have no clue what - DRM is a black box). Something not trusting you should be not trusted in return - i.e. always treated as potential malware.
And like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_Am...
But that's the result, not the reason why it's sinister. It's sinister because it shifts from presumption of innocence to police state method of "all guilty by default". Like the Sony exec quoted in the first link above expressed it:
>>> The industry will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams... It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what... Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop this. We will develop technology that transcends the individual user. We will firewall Napster at source - we will block it at your cable company. We will block it at your phone company. We will block it at your ISP. We will firewall it at your PC... These strategies are being aggressively pursued because there is simply too much at stake.
And in practice it's always bad because it's not a theoretical "protection of content", but something actual running in your private digital space (your computer, your OS, your program), with the sole purpose of not trusting you and doing whatever (you usually have no clue what - DRM is a black box). Something not trusting you should be not trusted in return - i.e. always treated as potential malware.