Image Source: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/steal_this_comic.png

It’s funny that when I spend my time on UbuntuLinux–99% of the time, that’s exactly where I’m at when home–I stumble across articles decrying the end of Windows because of its “digital rights management.” DRM, if you’re not familiar with it, is that silly technology lock that prevents you from doing stuff with your own files and instead makes you beholden to the Company that chooses to let you store those files on your own computer.

I’ve always been leery of the idea of trusted computing–where someone else controls your computer and you pretty much have no privacy, and lack control over what you want to do with what’s on your computer because someone else has decided what that level of control should be–and articles like this one about Windows 7 reinforce that wariness.

“A few days’ testing of Windows 7 has already disclosed some draconian DRM, some of it unrelated to media files. A legitimate copy of Photoshop CS4 stopped functioning after we clobbered a nagging registration screen by replacing a DLL with a hacked version. With regard to media files, the days of capturing an audio program on your PC seem to be over (if the program originated on that PC). The inputs of your sound card are severely degraded in software if the card is also playing an audio program (tested here with Grooveshark).

This may be the tip of the iceberg. Being in bed with the RIAA is bad enough, but locking your own files away from you is a tactic so outrageous it may kill the OS for many persons. Many users will not want to experiment with a second sound card or computer just to record from online sources, or boot up under a Linux that supports ntfs-3g just to control their files.”
Source: TechForensics via Slashdot

In schools, it’s easy to imagine that we need total control of a computer in a teachers’ or students’ hands. After all, we just don’t want them to do anything wrong with that machine. We need a different perspective…because a free society can’t be had if we raise our children to value totalitarianism (word? ;->).

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