No. DRM is just rights management. Content providers are free to provide content with whatever conditions they want and you're free to react in whatever way you want, including not viewing the content.
No freedoms have been harmed. Saying that they have doesn't make sense.
Assuming DRM restrictions match, and always grant, actual legal rights, you'd be right. For instance, you should be able to break DRM to exercise your legal rights, such as education, quoting, ... In practice, you couldn't be more wrong.
For instance, please show me how DRM would allow me to quote a DRM protected video stream and replay it in court because, for instance, I was personally defamed in said video stream. Or I want to use a Disney movie scene in a video editor to include short quotes in an online course about storytelling. That won't work without the DRM being broken entirely off at my request, but it is my legal right.
What you're saying is a bit like pointing out that every homeless man has the right to do anything Donald Trump or Bill Gates are allowed to do. In theory, yes.
The damage of DRM is even more evident when the context is taken into account.
Excessive rights have been given to rights holders, such that the song "Happy Birthday to You", first published in print in 1912, entered the common domain in the EU this January 2017. 105 Years.
Patents last 20 years to ensure innovation continues. At some point creative works belong to the society that enabled them, not lucky rent seekers.
This makes it hard to keep an archive.
If DRM existed in a world where copyright rules were entirely sane, where would its disadvantages would outweigh its advantages?
> What you're saying is a bit like pointing out that every homeless man has the right to spend as much money as Donald Trump or Bill Gates do. In theory, yes.
I don't know what this means. Rights are not the same thing as opportunity.
Getting access to DRM content under legal rights is the same as getting access to any other protected content, through legal means. Licensing a copy, writing a subpoena, or numerous other options. While it may not be convenient, I still don't see where freedoms are being harmed.
> Licensing a copy, writing a subpoena, or numerous other options. While it may not be convenient, I still don't see where freedoms are being harmed.
Licensing is the name of the legal act where the rights holder confers additional rights to the user. There is no licensing involved for all the examples I gave, and no permission from the rights holder because I already have those rights. I don't need to license anything to exercise those rights.
DRM is taking away the means for me to exercise rights I already have.
It is like me placing a fence around your car, then claiming you need permission from me to open that fence, to which I can then attach conditions. For you to drive your car you need to go through me, even if it's not all that convenient. No, not even to "make sure it's legal".
This is not reasonable, and you expecting anyone to be happy about such a thing is insane.
No, it is not taking away any of your rights. You still have all the same rights.
The access to the content requires additional work, that is all. The fact that you still have your rights is what allows you to request that access for whatever situation you're in.
So if I lock you in a room, I am not taking away any of your right to go where you choose ? It's just your "means of getting there" that are somewhat limited and those aren't protected by law.
And yes, that's exactly how insane you sound. If you limit my "access to my rights" you have definitely taken away those rights. Stop spouting bullshit.
What DRM does is make sure that any player asks for permission from the rights holder every time anything gets played. Do you seriously think that when suing the rights holder for defamation. I would not suddenly find that permission revoked ?
(you sue the person who benefits from defaming you, not (necessarily) the one doing the actual act. For example, if CNN had paid some homeless man to say I beat him up, I would sue CNN, not the homeless man)
You have a strange idea of how law works. In sufficiently high-profile cases you might be right. In general, no way. And that's ignoring that in criminal cases the court cannot even do that, under any circumstances.
And of course, people cheat. Asking the defendant to show this material enables them to cheat. Where do people get this attitude that courts are either capable, or even interested in being the final arbiter of truth in society ? They are not, they have no interest in doing so. They exist to keep the peace, and to keep situations from spiraling out of control. They only enforce the law in a very limited fashion, and this whole absolutist faith in the justice system that so many people have is a fantasy.
People do cheat in court. For two reasons :
1) hubris. Usually, if a case ends up in court it indicates there is more than a bit of ego involved on the defendant's side.
2) the punishments for lying to the court (esp. if it's manipulation along the lines of "we have 5 versions of the requested material, and yes we picked the least bad one), are far less than people think.
> How is this different than any other protected-access evidence material?
The complainant always, always, always, always brings the material and shows it to the court and the defendant.
So it's very different, and very unlikely to work at all otherwise.
