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> Why can't we have nice things? This world is so distopian.

Bonus: As technologists and developers, we are actively creating this dystopia! I'm sure a non-zero portion of HN's audience is hard at work implementing DRM, locking users out of products they own, and coming up with new roadblocks for users. Perhaps someone reading this very comment implemented this exact Blu-Ray DRM in a devices's firmware. To the rest of us, it's dystopia, but to that person, it's just another JIRA ticket Boss says they need to implement, so they do.

Blame the evil managers all you want, but you, dear reader, are the one writing the code and hitting Commit.

While I acknowledge the irony you are pointing out, even that is a feature of the world we live in, where humans are unable to coordinate. Eliminating DRM is just one of the many wonders we could accomplish if we could "simply" coordinate the efforts of all software engineers on the planet.

Because if you don't implement DRM, then you simply raise the marginal price that it costs a company to do so, and you make another engineer – who is willing to implement it – marginally richer, thus indirectly rewarding behavior you despised in the first place!

The only ways to eliminate things like DRM are to either globally coordinate all software engineers' efforts (probably impossible), or somehow... socially change the incentives such that DRM is a net-loss for content producers? Also seems probably impossible.

I realized the futility of taking an ethical stand in software, early in my career. I was a junior developer, and my next project was to write code to cheat a benchmark. I managed to work up the courage to tell my boss I had a problem with doing that, and he said "Hey, fine, no problem. We treat our developers well here" and was totally cool about it. I got another ticket to work on instead. Bill, two cubicles down, was happy to go and write the benchmark-cheating code.

I still refuse projects and jobs I consider unethical, but realize it's pissing in the wind until there is some larger coordinated framework (like a Hippocratic Oath for developers).

By far the easiest way to change incentives is with legislation and a 'right to access'. Of course easiest != easy.

Honestly, putting aside the philosophical debate, I own something I have access to without limitation and without the ability of a third party to take it away from me. I own a book I can read whenever, wherever and however I want. I don't own a book I have to give back to the library. I own blu rays I ripped in a similar way.

Yes you own the blu ray, but you don't actually own _the movie_. Despite owning the disc, your legal rights to how you can view the content on it are quite specific, and I believe that circumventing the DRM on it is illegal. So the fact that you have physical ownership of the disk is almost tangential to the discussion.

And of course there's always the whole, "Well actually the government has the final say in everything so does it count that you 'own' something if the government can simply take it away from you." but that's a whole other can of worms!

What more can I do if I own _the movie_ that I am not able to do after ripping the blu ray?

DRM is as anti-consumer as Apple and Tesla's policy saying the owner of a product can't repair their own product. Having physical ownership and removing drm is the only meaningful way to take ownership of a movie that doesn't rely on the good grace of an outside party. The US has laws against unrightful search and seizure and due process. The government can't "simply" take things away from me, at least in the US. True digital ownership of media requires the ability to playback things without relying on a third party. That's only possible having a dedrmed rip/reencoded copy. In practical terms, my legal rights on how I can view content is tangential to owning media, what matters is my actual ability to view it.

> The government can't "simply" take things away from me, at least in the US.

Yeah, maybe calling it "simple" was a mistake, but here I'm thinking about exactly such things as search & seizure and eminent domain where you can be legally deposessed of literally anything that you "own".

There is such a concept, rights owners just choose not to offer that option, which they're not obliged to.

This works for them as most people do not how the technical know-how to break through the DRM and most people are therefore discouraged by it.

You're correct in this subtle distinction, but I still mourn the fact that – for all intents and purposes – we live in a world that looks nearly the same as the one where the concept literally does not exist.

Agreed.

Although what is the alternative in a world where producing digital copies is a matter of pressing a button?

The whole idea of IP is to protect content creators. Those content creators sell their IP to large corporates to maximise their earning potential. Corporates subsequently take steps to protect those rights. Taking the ability to take those steps away from corporates by extension means taking those rights away from content creators. Is that what you're advocating for?

I don't actually know if my desired end-state is practical or even possible, but I can at least describe what it looks like:

* I pay $10-25 for a movie

* I can then personally view that movie with myself and my family on the display I want (the last hotel I stayed at didn't have a HDCP compatible TV so I couldn't display my purchased film on the TV)

* I am not forced to watch advertisements or piracy warnings before the film

* I can put the film on other devices I own to watch via more convenient methods (my phone, tablet, home theater setup)

Are those requirements fundamental to having a legal system that protects the rights of copyright owners? Honestly I don't think they are! Because the DRM schemes that enable the above situation clearly aren't stopping pirates in the first place. But who knows, maybe there's an alternate universe where content creators allow all the above bullet points and – as a consequence – very few entities invest in creating art! In the end if I had to choose between that universe and the one we have today, I'd still take the one we have today where art is legally well protected enough that we have a plethora of it.

The obvious solution to creating digital scarcity is putting the ownership into an NFT. That way you can still “own” a copy of a movie exactly in the same way DVDs used to be owned. NFTs aren’t ready for that yet, but one day when there is a centralized platform that becomes the YouTube of NFTs then it may be large enough. None of this will happen without regulation in the space though because right now owning an NFT is no different than say having the movie on Comcast’s website, but being unable to play it from any other application. When regulations making NFTs standard across multimedia occur then there will be true use of NFTs, meaning the websites just become the DVD player, and once you own an NFT of a movie you can play it on any website you link your wallet to so it knows you own that specific NFT. I’d guess that’s at least 20 years away though.