Comment by shmerl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shmerl | Hacker News Reader

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No, it's a wrong comparison. DRM is not only stupid, it's unethical. Comparing it to a lock on your apartment is not proper, since it totally reverses the idea. DRM is more comparable to placing a police robot in your house, in order to "prevent potential law violations". I.e. completely the opposite - privacy breaching, unethical preemptive policing.

The TPM (Trusted Platform Module) is an oxymoron. Trust is relation between two sides (users and distributors). It implies mutuality. The whole DRM concept is built on the opposite - i.e. not trusting the user, on treating users as potential criminals by default. Since users aren't trusted, there is no reason for users to trust DRM schemes, which should be treated as spyware and privacy intruding methods of control.

HN would really benefit from some sort of 'supervote' mechanism, that could be used once per thread or something. Because it takes effort to elaborate and tie truths together in a succinct way, effort that unfortunately has to be wasted on every half-assed outrage thread, with the resulting comments such as this one ending up on the same footing as the standard "no yu" and "it is what it is" ones.

Thank you.

Certain medicines which are prone to abuse have mechanisms in each pill that make it difficult to be cut up and snorted. Dynamite has chemical tracers added to it to make its use easier to trace. Photocopiers cannot duplicate currency. In all these cases products have been made more tamper proof so as to resist abuse. How is DRM different, here?

I consider photocopying control idiotic. Other use cases that you mentioned seem to deal with poisons, weapons and etc. You surely see a difference with that, or you don't? The whole issue with DRM is the level of control. Preventing crime is good. Making a totalitarian police state is not. DRM leans towards the second (invasive control which is way beyond what is ethical).

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