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ltsquigs
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That last repost is a good point to make about rights vs preservation, but I also want to highlight something else about DRM and the current digital rights regime: It isn't just about preservation.

I think it's always important to remember that the current idea of digital rights is a relatively modern conception (I mean digital shit isn't that old), and one of the most consequential laws relating to it, the DMCA, was written in a fever pitch of "anti-piracy" hysteria. As such it is written in such a way that is exceptionally favorable to corporations and not much to anyone else. (Go look up the minimum penalties sometimes for "bypassing DRM" or "unauthorized access" sometime and compare it to the penalties for literal Breaking And Entering laws)

We joke about the "You wouldn't download a car" video, but that was a huge PR campaign funded by multi billion dollar companies to ingrain in the public consciousness not just anti-piracy propaganda but also to ingrain the idea of digital rights being normal and fine, and while that tag line may be ridiculed, that propaganda I think mostly worked.

You see the results of this across so many controversies involving digital media.

If you have ever read an article about a game mod creator or cheat creator putting their mod behind a paywall, you find a litany of people complaining about the mod creators "leeching of the work" of the original thing they are modifying. Yet they don't question the existence of physical mods to things like cars being paid for.

Or if you have ever seen an article about a large corporation crushing some small fan-operated thing with some form of DMCA takedown or trademark complaint, you will see so many comments creating excuses ("They HAVE to do it to keep their copyright!", no they f-ing don't) for why those companies aren't complete pieces of shit for doing so.

And of course with preservation you see companies destroying their digital shows swiftly and coldly for some simple tax breaks, or some random YA authors destroying the internet archives library for some dirty money. Some people will turn to piracy, but many others will be scared to and just throw up their hands thinking its hopeless and out of our control.

It's not normal though. Digital Rights (as we currently imagine them) are strange and weird. DRM is strange and weird. The idea that the creator of a digital work (which often ends up being a corporation at this point), should be able to control every aspect of how that work is handled digitally is insane, but it seems like where society has landed at. (I mean think of how many people get mad at the idea that you didn't play a game "the way it was intended")

The reason that physical media doesn't have as many of these issues isn't magic, we just haven't ceded the control of every aspect of it to the "creator" (often a corporation that has acquired the rights somehow).

If you buy a physical book, you wouldn't expect the writer of that book to have the right to burn and destroy it at any point for whatever reason. It's your fucking book by that point. Yet we've ceded those rights in the digital realm. DRM gives the companies that own these licenses control over how you can use the things you've purchased and they can do whatever they want within that license.


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