By the same token 99.9% of consumers don't care about the legalities and 'freedoms' that Atwood talks about - only what they can do with their computers and the ease with which they can do it.
So, any advocacy of free software ideology which is aimed at the 'masses' and the 'people' is doomed to fail. It has to be aimed at the minority of more responsible and educated agents - who, in turn, can (and should!) care about these more distant and noble and sophisticated goals, while not being angry or judgmental toward the 'consumer', who isn't championing such lofty goals.
You have to walk alone, and should expect isolation and hardship, essentially. Wasn't it always the case?
All everyday users give a shit about is what they actually can do easily, given their shallow understanding of computing devices, to get the shit they need doing done.
This rarely taxes or even approaches the limit of commercial, closed software, so they perforce give zero shits about hypothetical freedoms that for all intents and purposes do not exist for them given their time and skill constraints.
* Wanted to rip a video DVD
* Wanted to copy songs from one iPod to another
* Wanted to use Remote Desktop while another user is logged in
* Tried to deal with HDCP problems between a cable receiver and television
These are all software problems, all imposed by artificial restrictions, and all violations of Freedom 0. You seem to think Freedom 0 is about technical competence; yet weak technical skills are what proprietary software vendors take advantage of when they impose these sorts of restrictions.
Those problems can not be separated out and analyzed independently like this.
> Wanted to rip a video DVD
> Wanted to copy songs from one iPod to another
Without those two limitations you wouldn't have either DVDs and iPods, as the economics of these technologies wouldn't made sense for companies which created them.
> Wanted to use Remote Desktop while another user is logged in
This sound like an accidental technical limitation.
> Tried to deal with HDCP problems between a cable receiver and television
This is, again, the limit that allows you to have those movies in the first place.
I'm all for the open source and Freedom 0, but please don't forget that it's not about Freedom 0 being violated or not. It's about it being violated or not having anything at all.
I think you are lacking citations needed to prove your point that we would not have movie and music players if they were not deliberately restricted. There were digital music players prior to the iPod that were not so restricted. CDs never had any restrictions built in; what makes you think DVDs would never have happened without the restrictions? I know for a fact that you are wrong about HDCP, because the same cable receiver had HD component outputs that had no HDCP requirements.
To put it another way, if people demanded Freedom 0, they would have it -- and there would still have been DVDs and iPods. The MPAA is not going to give up a multi-billion dollar market. They obviously want to restrict how people use their computers, because it increases their advantage in the market, but that market would not disappear if they did not have that increased advantage (if they only had all their other advantages). The same is true of the software market, the music industry, etc.
It is not a choice between Freedom 0 and "some kind of empty void;" it is choice between Freedom 0, and not having Freedom 0, with everything else remaining largely the same.
Oh but while you're here how about you explain the popularity of DRM-free mp3 downloads :)
Blu-ray's AACS actually is much better than CSS ever was, and as far as I know it hasn't been attacked in either a brute-force or break-the-algorithm sense. But like all other DRM, there are inherent flaws it can't work around. You need only extract a player key and you can freely decrypt the data.
The point of Freedom Zero is exactly the opposite: It's about eliminating bullshit restrictions that, while given enough time and effort can easily be broken by a smart group of people educated in the field, only prevent the regular user from using their property how they want to.