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Comment by catnaroek | Hacker News Reader

DRM is about neither security nor freedom.

But the more secure we make our devices, the more opportunities we create for them to be locked down. One person's security update is another's anti-jailbreak patch. Trusted computing can be used to protect against malware and to block users from saving Netflix streams.

I disagree with the notion of a computing system being “secure” in absolute terms, without reference to what the user wants to do with it. A system is secure if it's unlikely to compromise the integrity and/or privacy of information the user deems sensitive, which of course varies from one user to another.

Without reference to a specific user, all you can talk about is a computing system being restricted or unrestricted, and I don't want my computing devices to have restrictions imposed by someone other than myself.

DRM is surprisingly security oriented, if you think about it,the premise of DRM is not trusting the user, which is more extreme than most security models (allow the user root/admin access to the OS is anithetical to not trusting the user).

DRM is more about who has the keys, than security itself.

Much of the base terminology of DRM comes from the military, and it involves the generals "back home" being able to trust that a computer out in the field, containing sensitive data, will not allow non-authorized personnel, never mind the enemy, to access said data.

Modern computer security is all about who has the keys.

Just like a steel door, when somebody else has the keys, you are not secure - you are imprisoned.

It's funny. People get all excited about homomorphic encryption, which is basically DRM with a mathematical proof.

Because it works both ways. I can send my data to a server and have it do things to it without ever actually knowing it. You can't let me watch a video without letting me watch a video.

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