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0 pointsfluidcruft1y ago0 comments

Probably advantage of DRM is that circumvention can be criminalized and absence of DRM implies circumvention.

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What advantage does this have over just criminalizing the underlying infringement regardless of DRM?

Also, how does criminalizing it actually help anything, since the difficulty is in the scale of it happening and the difficulty of detecting it rather than the severity of the penalties, and imposing draconian penalties on random kids only turns the public against you?

fluidcruftOP1y ago

I think it plays differently before a jury. Juries can easily understand copying files and could potentially invalidate. But it's different when lawyers get to move the conversation to scary hacker garble about technical skill and intent. Evidence of intent is the real value.

AnthonyMouse1y ago

Juries are far less incompetent than they're made out to be, not least because both sides get to describe what's happening.

And you can't even get evidence of intent from this anyway because DRM circumvention tools don't actually come with a ski mask and a set of lockpicks. You install a tool called "video downloader" which supports a hundred sites and 10% of them have some kind of DRM which it automatically strips in the background, you may not even be aware that it's happening when you use it.

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AnthonyMouse1y ago

What advantage does this have over just criminalizing the underlying infringement regardless of DRM?

fluidcruftOP1y ago

AnthonyMouse1y ago

Juries are far less incompetent than they're made out to be, not least because both sides get to describe what's happening.

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