MESSAGE
| DATE | 2016-06-24 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout-NYLXS] DRM is theft
|
http://boingboing.net/2016/06/22/phones-without-headphone-jacks.html
Phones without headphone jacks are phones with DRM for audio
Headphone_jack_3.5mm (1)
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Nilay Patel's magnificent rant about Apple's rumored announcement that
future phones won't have headphone jacks starts with the main event: "1.
Digital audio means DRM audio."
It's true: the existence of HDMI ports enabled the use of HDCP, and led
to the growth of video services whose products refused to play at full
resolution (or at all) through analog outputs, and also arbitrarily
refused to talk to various monitors and screens if some secret algorithm
decided that they'd be a risk.
Patel later notes that "Ditching a deeply established standard will
disproportionately impact accessibility," but misses the connection
between these two phenomena. Once there's DRM on an output, then you can
only plug new devices into that output if you have permission from the
consortium that made the DRM. That group may make some accommodations
for accessibility, but can never think of all the use-cases and
solutions that a wide-open standard will have (for example, the W3C's
video DRM, EME, has many accessibility accommodations, but wouldn't
allow color-blind people to shift the gamut of video in realtime).
The point of DRM isn't that it is technically challenging to defeat:
it's that it allows manufacturers to invoke the DMCA -- and
international analogues, such as European laws that implement the EUCD
-- to prevent people from doing legal things.
Tivo is legal. Tivo for Netflix is illegal -- not because any government
passed a law banning PVRs for streaming video, but because Netflix
hasn't given us permission to PVR its service, and to add a PVR without
permission means bypassing the DRM, and bypassing DRM is very, very illegal.
Headphone jacks' ubiquity have made them a target for all kinds of
innovative thinking. My favorite underwater MP3 player uses one for both
charging and USB file-transfer (!), and manages to make it waterproof
(!!). Square and Stripe have enabled individuals and small businesses to
transact billions of dollars' worth of commerce using a headphone jack
as a UI (partly because connecting to the other ports on phones comes
with so many onerous conditions and requires permission from so many
parties).
When we allow a company, or a cartel from an incumbent industry, to
monopolize the things that can plug into products that we all use, to
convert their commercial preferences to legal obligations, we shut down
innovation, at the expense of all the people who stand to benefit from
that innovation.
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive
http://www.coinhangout.com - coins!
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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