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PhasmaFelis

> why do you oppose DRM? It's been around for years.

So has syphilis.

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coffee laugh-barfed all over keyboard, thanks :)

Haha, good point. But my idea behind that argument was that it won't hurt anything more than it does already.

And it already hurts things enough.

By making it a part of a "standard", you help spreading the disease. Right now, the fact that DRM is implemented via Flash paints it as 'painful-to-use'. Once you implement it without the pain that is Flash, you have removed the barrier that is slowing the spread of DRM.

Yes. Because heaven forfend anyone should get paid. One cannot serve both God and Mammon.

Right. Because without DRM, people don't get paid?

Your argument (here) is not better than the STD comparison: Apples, oranges, no relevant content.

Isn't most of the (digital!) music market DRM free by now? How does that EVEN WORK?

Actually, DRM systems prevent me from seeing content I'm willing to purchase. I tried to buy the Dragon Book on Kindle some time ago, but I couldn't because I live in Australia.

What was that about getting paid again?

Or any active content! Why would Amazon sell apps in only North America?!

It's called geoblocking. The Australian Senate held hearings into it. Fun fact: I was looking to buy Cowboy Bebop and Star Trek: The Next Generation on iTunes. Not available, but definitely available in the U.S. App Store.

Even before streaming, the media publishing industries have been into segmenting the world into different markets for the same product: For example: books separately published in the US and the UK, DVDs and Blu-Ray disks with region codes that prevent playing on the other region players (providing they're players which obey this flag.)

Time to disrupt these arseholes.

But unlike most other media there's no other way to purchase them. I can't buy DVDs of Kindle active content, I can't get it off ebay.

I guess they mustn't consider the international market worth the trouble of solving whatever legal issue is stopping them from selling them to other countries.

My publisher pays me and all their other authors and uses no DRM on e-books. They sell more e-book because it isn't a hassle to move them around. They are a big enough publisher that if their sales and revenue significantly diverged from industry norms they would rethink that policy. On the other hand, I don't know of anyone going out of business for lack of DRM.

Except it will hurt things a great deal. DRM already causes a great deal of harm, helping to propagate it into a standard to make it more widespread will cause a great deal of harm.

Well, hey, if you don't have an argument...

The argument that as something has been around for long time makes it acceptable was neatly deflated by a counter example of something awful that has been around for ages that is definitely not desirable.

Plus, it was funny. Absurdity often highlights problems in arguments.

Who could disagree that the cavil is the highest form of debate?

Try argumentum ad absurdum.

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