If buying is not owning, then piracy is not theft
Twenty years ago, I got into a public (friendly) spat with then-editor-in-chief Chris Anderson.
Wired
. I publicly expressed my disappointment with what was published in
Wired
rosy reviews of DRM-laden digital devices. Anderson said I'm an idealist if I expect a magazine to drop gadget reviews because of DRM:
https://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2004/12/is_drm_evil.html
I responded publicly by telling him that he had misunderstood me. It was not a matter of ideological purity, but of the integrity of the reviews. Wired encouraged people to buy a product because it had features x, y, and z, but at any time in the future the manufacturer could disable any of these features:
https://memex.craphound.com/2004/12/29/cory-responds-to-wired-editor-on-drm/
I suggested that all favorable reviews Wired devices with DRM contained the following note:
WARNING: THE FUNCTIONS OF THIS DEVICE MAY BE WITHDRAWN WITHOUT NOTICE PURSUANT TO SECRET NEGOTIATION TERMS. THE WORTH OF YOUR INVESTMENT DEPENDS ON THE GOODWILL OF THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY'S MOST PARANOID AND TECHNOLOGY-FEARING EXECUTIVES. THIS AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE USUALLY USED TO CHARGE MONEY FOR WHAT YOU'RE USED TO GET FOR FREE – INCLUDE THE PRICE OF ALL THE MEDIA YOU'LL HAVE TO BUY AGAIN AND AGAIN. NEVER IN THE PAST HAS ANY COMPANY IN THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY HAD SUCH OPPORTUNITIES, BUT NOW THEY HAVE COMPLETE CARTE BLANCHE.
Wired
did not support my proposal.
But I was right. Ability to change the list of functions, prices and availability what have you already paid for? is a huge temptation for corporations. Selling inkjet printers has always been a sticky business, but when printers started connecting directly to the Internet, companies like HP began releasing “security updates” that changed the printer's behavior so that it refused to use the third-party ink you'd already paid for:
This scam wouldn't work if we could roll back to the state before the “update”, but then DRM comes into the picture. Due to the complexity of intellectual property laws, reverse engineering products with DRM becomes criminal offense. Combine constant network access with blanket criminalization of any changes made by the user, and the device turns into a pile of manure.
This is the root of all the right to repair tricks. Yes, companies restrict access to diagnostic codes and parts, but codes can be retrieved and parts can be cloned. The real problem preventing repairs is the law, not technology. The company that makes the horribly unreliable McFlurry machines in McDonald's restaurants makes a fortune by charging franchisees to fix the endlessly broken machines. When a third party began to threaten this racket by reverse engineering the DRM that prevented third party repairs, they were drowned in legal claims:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war
Everyone loves this extortion. At the OhMyHack conference in Poland, a team of security researchers recently presented their feature analysis locomotives NEWAG Impuls preventing repairs. NEWAG has flooded its trains with traps to detect whether they are being serviced by independent services; the reaction to any unauthorized repair was that the train turned into a “brick”:
https://mamot.fr/@q3k@hackerspace.pl/111528162905209453
Poland is part of the EU, and therefore is obliged to comply with the provisions of the 2001 EU Intellectual Property Directive, including Article 6, which prohibits such reverse engineering. The researchers plan to present their work again at the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg; Germany also signed the Directive. The threat to researchers following the publication of this work is very real, but so is the threat to conferences:
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/researchers-face-legal-threats-over-sdmi-hack/
Twenty years ago, Chris Anderson told me that it was unrealistic to expect tech companies to waive DRM requirements from the entertainment companies whose media they hoped to play on their equipment. Then and now, I believe that any technology company that sells a gadget whose functionality can be recalled is committing fraud. You pay for x, y and z, and if the company is contractually obligated to remove x and y upon request, then it is selling a product you cannot rely on without telling you.
But the situation is even worse. When a technology company designs a device to allow remote, permanent downgrades without user consent, it motivates both external and internal parties demand such downgrades. Selling a product with a remote irreversible downgrade function without the user’s consent is inevitable leads to the point that the worst person at a product planning meeting will suggest doing just that. Because there are no penalties for this, the best people in this meeting cannot win the argument and have to watch in pain as their favorite product turns into a pile of manure:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification
But even if everyone at the meeting is principled and no one dreams of deliberately degrading the product, the very existence of the remote irreversible downgrade function makes the product vulnerable to external parties who require its use. In 2022, Adobe informed its users that it had lost its agreement that allowed Pantone colors to be used in Photoshop, Illustrator and other software as a service packages. As a result, users will have to start paying monthly to see their own finished images. Fail to pay, and all Pantone-coded pixels in your graphics will simply turn black:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process
Adobe blamed Pantone for this and there was a lot of speculation about what happened. Perhaps Pantone raised its prices for Adobe, so Adobe dumped the burden of paying on its users, hoping to embarrass Pantone? Who knows? And who Maybe know? That's the point: you've invested in Photoshop, spent money and time creating images in it, but you don't know if you'll be able to access those images in the future or under what conditions. These terms may change, and if you don't like it, you can go to hell.
All of these companies are run by CEOs who got an MBA from Darth Vader University, the first lesson of which was: “I changed the terms of the deal. Pray I don't do this again.” Adobe intentionally chose to design her software so that it was vulnerable to such requirements, and for this choice she must be paid users. Yes, Pantone employs assholes, but that's their fault. Adobe. She put a “Kick Me” sign on your back and Pantone complied.
It keeps happening and will keep happening. Recently, Playstation owners who bought (or “bought”) Warner TV shows saw reports that Warner had backed out of a deal to sell videos through the Playstation store, so all the videos they paid for would be permanently deleted. They won't even get a refund (honestly, refunds are also bullshit; if I sold books, I wouldn't break into customers' houses and steal the books I sold, even if I could leave some money on the table).
Yes, Warner is an incredibly lame company, run by the most guillotined executive in all of Southern California – the disgusting David Zaslav, who managed the Warner-Discovery merger. Zaslav is an asshole who figured out a way to make more money: instead of releasing finished films, he cancels completed films and TV showsreceiving a tax write-off for this:
https://aftermath.site/there-is-no-piracy-without-ownership
Imagine spending several years of your life creating a program – leaving for work at five in the morning, leaving the children to make their own breakfast, performing stunts that could maim or kill you, working 16 hours a day at the peak of the covid pandemic and coming home Late night. And then this piece of a person forever deletes program before anyone even sees it to get a small tax benefit. This is real moral hazard!
However, without Sony's complicity in designing the Playstation's remote, irreversible downgrade feature without user consent, Zaslav's war against art and creative workers would have been limited only to unreleased material. Thanks to Sony's terrible choices, David Zaslav can break into your house, steal your movies, and not even have to leave a twenty on the table.
The meaning here is the same as twenty years ago in a conversation with Chris Anderson – this is a predictable, inevitable result designing devices for remote irreversible downgrades without user consent.
Of course, Zaslav deserves [далее идёт перечисление всяческих кар с использованием местных идиоматических выражений — прим. пер.]. But the executive from Sony who released the product that allowed Zaslav to break into your house and rob you should also be suffering next to him. This bad man knew what he was doingAnd did it anyway. [Ещё одно перечисление кар с использованием местных идиоматических выражений — прим. пер.]
Meanwhile, studios continue to make a compelling case for the benefits of stealing films instead of paying for them. Tyler James Hill wrote: “If buying does not involve ownership, then piracy is not theft”:
https://bsky.app/profile/tylerjameshill.bsky.social/post/3kflw2lvam42n
