Comment by shmerl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shmerl | Hacker News Reader

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Let me repeat it again. Authentication is OK. DRM is not. If you don't get the difference, let's explain. Authentication is simply ensuring that you are you. Normal security mechanism, nothing wrong with it.

DRM can employ authentication in itself, sure. But DRM is not about ensuring that you are you. DRM is about limiting what you can do with your own system in various ways and / or spying on you (even when it already knows that you are you). Simply because DRM is preemptive policing.

I have no problem with authentication, same way I have no problems with you using a lock on your door (normal security). I have problems with DRM, same way I'd have problems with police putting their camera in someone's house (overreaching preemptive policing).

Hopefully this makes it more clear. I often see people confuse DRM with merely security / authentication / encryption etc. That's plain wrong.

> The key is to realize that DRM as practiced by corporations is evil and unworkable because the economics were utterly unrealistic.

No. It's evil because it's using police state methodology of treating everyone as potential criminal and employing presumption of guilt, which results in overreaching policing measures which violate one's privacy and security.

"It's evil because it's using police state methodology of treating everyone as potential criminal and employing presumption of guilt"

Isn't that what you're doing when you lock your doors though?

> Isn't that what you're doing when you lock your doors though?

No. You lock your doors to protect your house from external threats. Here it's completely reversed. DRM invades your private digital space (your computer, your system, the programs you run etc.) for the sake of policing you. I.e. it's not like a lock on your house doors. It's like a police camera placed inside your house. That's exactly what makes it overreaching and unacceptable.

Policing itself is a not an evil idea in general. But it's evil when it's overreaching. Saying - "let's prevent crime" is OK. Saying "let's place police cameras in everyone's house to prevent crime" is not OK.

The previous poster is talking about personal DRM. You keep misunderstanding what they are saying.

In the personal DRM case it would not be invading "your private digital space", you would be using it to protect your digital space.

It is not like "a police camera placed inside your house." It is the equivalent of the homeowner placing a security camera themselves to protect their property.

There is no such thing as "personal DRM". That's what you and the previous poster fail to understand. DRM is always about policing others by invading their digital space.

Protecting your own digital space is called security. Let's be clear on terms usage, otherwise time will be wasted because of misunderstanding.

No. You fail to understand that DRM as practiced by Sony et al is just one application. In one way, it's understandable if you had not been exposed to the academic literature early enough, because after a certain point, political activism, popular accounts, and corporate literature swamp anything more academic and general.

DRM is always about policing others by invading their digital space.

Or about voluntarily giving some autonomy up. In the case of organizations like Facebook, they would be giving up autonomy, such that they would only run certain audited versions of certain software. Given that such companies have large numbers of computers aggregated in a relatively small number of locations, the economics of verifying these mechanisms is much more favorable than the inadvisable "traditional" use of DRM has been.

You are not going to be able to process ideas like this properly, if your only background is uneducated Internet backlash.

Protecting your own digital space is called security. Let's be clear on terms usage, otherwise time will be wasted because of misunderstanding.

Throughout, you have been insistent on an imprecise, popularized usage of terms. I will agree, however, that time has been wasted because of misunderstanding.

> You fail to understand that DRM as practiced by Sony et al is just one application.

They created the term and they polluted it for good. Trying to whitewash it now serves no useful purpose except causing confusion. If you want to talk about concepts of protecting your personal information - just use another term, otherwise misunderstanding is guaranteed (like above).

> popularized usage of terms

No, it was you who tried to create your own interpretation of DRM which differs from what its designers put into it. That's up to you, but don't expect anyone to understand you.

Trying to whitewash it now serves no useful purpose except causing confusion.

Again proof that you have no familiarity with the abstract concepts or its history, prior to the popularized furor. Nor do you care or are particularly curious, or are capable of processing the logical implications of such new information.

No, it was you who tried to create your own interpretation of DRM which differs from what its designers put into it.

Let me assure you that the designers of DRM had the other interpretations in mind the whole time. You are basically arguing for your own ignorance.

don't expect anyone to understand you.

In other words, I should expect only uninformed rubes on the Internet.

Let me repeat it again. Authentication is OK. DRM is not. If you don't get the difference, let's explain.

Let me explain AGAIN -- I'm not talking about such a system running on your machine. I'm talking about such mechanisms running in Facebook's, Apple's, Google's, and the NSA's server farms. It's about 4 messages into this thread. Please get a clue.

> I'm talking about such mechanisms running in Facebook's, Apple's, Google's, and the NSA's server farms.

Which is? Security threat for them (same as DRM which runs on your machine is a security threat for you). It doesn't sound sensible.

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