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Comment by ChuckNorris89 | Hacker News Reader

Oh please, get off your preachy high horse, and stop trying to guild trip devs into thinking that developing DRM solutions is like developing WMD or something. This is not some NSO-level spyware that can be used to spy and target people.

Plus, some devs enjoy this kind work and some companies working on DRM are in areas that are not as hot as the Bay Area (small cities in Europe) so they might not have that many lucrative options you assume.

Sure, no consumer enjoys DRM, like how no driver likes police officers issuing speeding fines, but demonizing devs working on such solutions is something I did not expect from the supposedly enlightened HN reader base.

How about you target your disapproval at the Bay Area devs whos' generous compensation packages plastered around here depend on them building nefarious ways of siphoning and data-mining peoples' private data to get them addicted to consuming content and click on ads.

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Hey, not trying to make you or anyone else feel guilty. In fact I specifically chose my words to not do so. I just think developer talent is wasted on stuff that is ultimately useless at best, and making life harder for legal users at worst.

DRM is very hard to get right, it's some sort of challenge. It's no wonder it attracts very bright minds and they probably are happy working on it.

Your argument is predicated on the assumption that all DRM is bad, which is just simply not reality.

Many companies implement DRM in ways that are poor, excessive, overreaching, needlessly restrictive, etc. .. and yes, while poor implementations are frequent, it does not mean that DRM itself is worthless or an enemy of society.

In fact, good implementations of DRM are exactly what is needed in order to prevent hackers from stealing your most valuable digital assets.

The issue is that in conversation DRM is used as a perjorative, whereas terms like data loss prevention are somehow seen as non-malicious, even though it is the same core idea.

Could you tell us digital assets have been successfully protected by DRM?

We use Microsoft Information Protection solutions for all of our important documents which includes things like sensitivity labels which ensure only the users that have been appropriate clearance can view them.

People can e-mail the documents or do whatever they want with them, and Microsoft's DRM ensures that only the users that have access are able to view them.

The whole thing is totally seamless and requires no extra effort on the part of the users.

Our corporate documents can't be stolen without comprimising both someone's account and two-factor authentication.

It's a great example of DRM done well.

What does it do to prevent taking a photo of a screen?

Fair point, I should not have said can't.

No DRM is a perfect solution, my only point is that DRM itself isn't inherently evil.

Bitlocker. Or most other software that interfaces with a TPM to protect your secrets

> This is not some NSO-level spyware that can be used to spy and target people.

Not exactly NSO level, but this certainly caused issues at the time.... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_roo...

Pointing out an infamous example of invasive DRM(trojan) that has nothing to do with the DRM in this topic is just whataboutism.

What do you mean by "has nothing to do with the DRM"?

I don’t know, probably an unpopular opinion, but I feel like working on a technology that wastes peoples time through un-skippable ads is akin to a small murder. You’re taking tiny chunks of many peoples lives. On a popular film, it almost certainly adds up to more than a lifetime.

It’s the cigarettes of modern technology.

Unskippable ads are just one of the things that ultimately have dropped my enthusiasm for movies to zero. I've never once bought a Blu-Ray of any sort. It's not that a boycott of one is going to make a bit of difference, it's that I'd rather spend my time and money on things that aren't hostile to me.

> This is not some NSO-level spyware that can be used to spy and target people.

It isn't, until it is: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/adobe-spyware-reveals-...

> Oh please, get off your preachy high horse, and stop trying to guild trip devs into thinking that developing DRM solutions is like developing WMD or something.

The OP didn't make any such comparison; yet you make such a comparison, a few sentences later:

> Sure, no consumer enjoys DRM, like how no driver likes police officers issuing speeding fines

DRM props-up uncompetitive business models, to the detriment of customers and society at-large. It is in no way comparable to speed limits, which have literally saved millions of lives over the years (random Google link: https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/reducing-s... ).

> no driver likes police officers issuing speeding fines

When will the US join the 2000s and get cameras so police can do actual work?

Top Gear on Speed Cameras

https://youtu.be/ZwEGlzGms4o

> How about you target your disapproval at the Bay Area devs whos'

Whataboutism...

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