On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 15:00, Sean DALY <[email protected]> wrote: > David, I'm curious, what's your basis for asserting that FLOSS is > incompatible with DRM? Sun's Open Media Commons project is designed to > allow media playback restriction. OpenIPMP > (http://sourceforge.net/projects/openipmp/) is not an active project > AFAIK, but it is Mozilla MPL. > > I can't speak for David, but my own feeling on the subject is that because the source is in the open, circumventing any restrictions would become fairly trivial. While "security through obscurity is no security" still holds (and is why even closed DRM has proven ineffective), it's hard to see how FLOSS DRM would be in any way effective. At least with closed DRM, it might take a little time to break.
While I can't see much argument for FLOSS DRM, I can see a lot of argument that if you're touting a DRM system, supporting FLOSS platforms is a really good idea. Look at what happend with DVD - some kid wanted to watch DVDs on his Linux box, the "powers that be" couldn't be bothered creating a licensed DVD player for Linux so the kid breaks DVD's CSS, rendering CSS useless. All it takes is one individual to break a DRM system and the exact same superdistribution that DRM is trying to stop will quickly spread the circumvention technique. Thinking about it, whatever DRM the BBC uses will be broken. Otherwise law abiding people will then turn what could well be criminal activity just to use the HD signal the way they currently use the SD signal. I don't see how this is in the public interest.
