alt Hacker NewsHow can you be "pretty sure" they're going to develop precisely the technology needed to implement DRM but also will never use or allow it to be used by anybody but the lawful owners of the hardware? You can't.
It's like designing new kinds of nerve gas, "quite sure" that it will only ever be in the hands of good guys who aren't going to hurt people with it. That's powerful naïveté. Once you make it, you can't control who has it and what they use it for. There's no take-backsies, that's why it should never be created in the first place.
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The technology needed to implement DRM has been there for 20+ years and has already evolved in the space where it makes sense from an "evil" standpoint (if you're on that particular side of the fence - Android client attestation), so someone implementing the flip side that might actually be useful doesn't particularly bother me. I remember the 1990s "cryptography is the weapon of evil" arguments too - it's funny how the tables have turned, but I still believe that in general these useful technologies can help people overall.
> It's like designing new kinds of nerve gas, "quite sure" that it will only ever be in the hands of good guys who aren't going to hurt people with it. That's powerful naïveté. Once you make it, you can't control who has it and what they use it for. There's no take-backsies, that's why it should never be created in the first place.
Interesting choice of analogy, to compare something with the singular purpose to destroy biological entities, to a computing technology that enforces what code is run.
Can you not see there might be positive, non-destructive applications of the latter? Are you the type of person that argues cars shouldn't exist due to their negative impacts while ignoring all the positives?