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Comment by gopkarthik | Hacker News Reader

"Telegram Introduces DRM"

Just want to point out that it's not actually DRM. Just Telegram giving users the option to prevent message recipients from downloading content.

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So you could say Telegram is giving users the option to digitally manage the usage rights of the content?

How is it different from DRM?

It doesn't prevent the user from accessing it "the wrong way", it just makes it inconvenient to save an external copy.

Exactly as with DRM.

Only in the most liberal sense of the phrase "DRM" (which IMO would be a useless definition as many platforms/apps have analogous intentional and unintentional barriers, but they're not called "DRM"), but not DRM as we know it. While the decision is on the sender's side, a crucial distinction is that the sender enjoys the same power as the recipient in the conversation - very similar to information sharing between friends IRL. Calling it "DRM" is just pedantic.

> as many platforms/apps have analogous intentional and unintentional barriers

Now, that I'm thinking about it, it seems that the new trend of hiding the files on the disk looks indeed like a light version of DRM preventing users from doing whatever they want with their data.

So every Authenticator app is implementing DRM?

Do they prevent the authenticated person from sharing the accessed data?

It does not prevent anything, it just makes it inconvenient enough for the average user.

Nothing prevents anything. You could also disconnect the display and dump the raw data to capture the image.

Which seems to be Telegram's goal here.

like DRM?

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