Thread by @doctorow, DRM is a system for prohibiting legal conduct that manufacturers and their [...]

DRM is a system for prohibiting legal conduct that manufacturers and their shareholders don& #39;t like.

Laws like the US DMCA 1201 (and its equivalents all over the world) ban tampering with DRM, even if no copyright infringement takes place.

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That means that manufacturers can design products so that doing things that displease them requires bypassing DRM, and thus committing a felony. It amounts to "felony contempt of business model."

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The expansive language of DRM law makes it a crime to break DRM, to tell people how to break DRM, to point out defects in DRM (including defects that make products unsafe to use), or to traffick in DRM-breaking tools.

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Beyond mere profiteering, though, DRM has more insidious consequences: it creates a world where using objects in ways that suit you can be a literal crime, even if those uses have NO impact on the company& #39;s bottom line.

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For example, #EME is a video encryption standard approved by the @W3C. It has many accessibility tools built in, but only those that manufacturers and committee-members thought people with disabilities needed.

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If your disability isn& #39;t on the list, you can& #39;t adapt video without risking felony prosecution (there was a popular proposal to legally require the companies that made the standard promise not to attack people with disabilities for doing this, but they rejected it).

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So if you have photosensitive epilepsy, you can& #39;t write (or pay someone to write) a filter that looks ahead in video-streams for seizure-triggering effects and block them. You can beg the companies to do this, but you can& #39;t do it yourself.

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"Legitimate things that the designers didn& #39;t anticipate" is an expansive category! For example, @Medtronic is one of the largest med-tech companies in the world (thanks to a series of mergers that also allowed it to dodge its taxes).

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Despite having been founded as an independent med-tech repair shop, the company is waging bitter war against independent service, so that hospitals must pay its - high-priced - technicians to service their equipment.

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Medtronic& #39;s PB840 ventilators are the most common ventilators in the world. The pandemic has spiked demand for PB840s even as it has grounded Medtronic& #39;s authorized technicians and busted the supply-chain of official parts.

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Independent techs are doing life-saving work fixing PB840s, scavenging parts from multiple units. To do this, they have to risk five-year prison sentences, using black-market DRM-breaking tools made by a lone Polish hacker and sent around the world.

#medtronic-again">https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/10/flintstone-delano-roosevelt/ #medtronic-again

11/">https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/1...

There are so many contingencies that design teams can NEVER anticipate, and there are also some that they SHOULD anticipate. The omissions and blind-spots of companies are bad enough, but when correcting them is a felony, it gets really stupid and ugly.

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No one is immune. Consider this tale by Redditor Zeromindz, about a wealthy Ferrari owner whose car-seat installation bricked a performance car.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/comments/j914fh/dude_comes_straight_from_the_dealership_for_a/

13/">https://old.reddit.com/r/Justrol...

The car was designed to lock the engine if it detected "tampering" and the only way to unlock it afterwards was via the car& #39;s built-in cellular modem. However, the work was being done in an underground garage where there was no cell service.

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A Ferrari technician flew in, but couldn& #39;t fix the $500,000 car. Eventually they managed to release the brake and a team of workers pushed the car up the ramps and into range.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/comments/j9jim1/update_theyve_flown_a_very_italian_sounding/

15/">https://www.reddit.com/r/Justrol...

*Update* They've flown a very italian sounding Ferrari technician...

Posted in r/Justrolledintotheshop by u/Zeromindz • 598 points and 112 comments

https://www.reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/comments/j9jim1/update_theyve_flown_a_very_italian_sounding/

But then they discovered that some part of all that work had permanently bricked the car. It had to be hoisted onto a flatbed and returned to the dealer.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/comments/j9qnh3/final_update_and_there_it_goes_boys_a_true_marvel/

16/">https://old.reddit.com/r/Justrol...

This is darkly comic, to be sure, but it& #39;s also a reminder of the dangers of allowing companies to create an everything-not-forbidden-is-mandatory system for their products.

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Under normal market conditions, some enterprising soul would be making and selling "Ferrari unbricking devices" and mechanics would keep one in a drawer, just in case. Instead, a company& #39;s war for excess profits becomes a war on unexpected customer situations.

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There& #39;s a saying: "If you& #39;re not paying for the product, you& #39;re the product." That& #39;s wrong. Someone paid $500k for this product. Their ability to use it as they see fit is STILL contingent on the forbearance of a multinational corporation.

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Better to say: "If a company can make you the product, you are the product." If monopolies or DRM-law (which creates and reinforces monopoly) can force you to arrange your affairs to benefit them, not you, they will.

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That, after all, is the ultimate grift - the LEGAL grift. The con that says that you are a lawless cur for having the temerity to have pockets full of money that, legally speaking, the grifter should have.

Image: Zeromindz
https://www.reddit.com/user/Zeromindz/

eof/">https://www.reddit.com/user/Zero...

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