Ubuntu To Investigate Digital Rights Management

[zanny]

We've established we hate DRM, OK. But the hard fact is, if we want Linux to advance; we need some form of DRM so companies can feel safe.

You don't need to bow to old media. It forsakes the foundations of FOSS by putting your content behind an obfuscated veil, the same way closed source software is a black box. Any DRM solution would have to be proprietary because if it were open sourced it would take minutes for someone to reverse engineer it and output unencumbered media.

[Mike Frett]

Has to be done

We've established we hate DRM, OK. But the hard fact is, if we want Linux to advance; we need some form of DRM so companies can feel safe.

[Pallidus]

Taking advice on security from antivirus companies is like taking advice from foxes on how to build your chicken coops.

uh? actually if the foxes were willing to help they would be the best ones to offer advise on impenetrable chicken coops.



btw os x is indeed years behind windows in term of security, that is fact and every IT guy knows it

the problem being is that there's not even 5% of the quantity malware/exploits etc etc in os x that there is windows.


You can see that just by os x becoming more popular you see a lot more security problems like flashback etc etc etc...

[erendorn]

Taking advice on security from antivirus companies is like taking advice from foxes on how to build your chicken coops.

Not that you'd be any better asking chickens.

[dee.]

Eugene Kaspersky: Apple '10 years behind Microsoft in terms of security'

but no matter what, I believe you. that Eugene guy must be drunk.

Taking advice on security from antivirus companies is like taking advice from foxes on how to build your chicken coops.

[Yorgos]

Windows is closed and it's probably the most insecure system on the planet.

Eugene Kaspersky: Apple '10 years behind Microsoft in terms of security'

but no matter what, I believe you. that Eugene guy must be drunk.

[zanny]

Why did a topic about Canonical being Apple 2.0 turn into a back and forth about DRM, qt, and piracy?

[dee.]

i wouldn't go so far like you but actually the biggest success in it world had this success DUE to illegal copies: Microsoft Windows!

And they silently allowed it. they started to close this down the first time with windows XP.

p.s. there are many many other examples btw.

I should dig out my favorite quote again...

"It's easier for our software to compete with Linux when there's piracy than when there's not." -Bill Gates, Fortune Magazine, July 17 2007

[a user]

@BO$$

Their viewpoint is rather flawed. DRM hurts customers, and piracy equals free advertising.

I am a content producer myself, and have in the past uploaded my own products on TPB. Embrace it, instead of fighting it, you will only lose customers by adding DRM.

i wouldn't go so far like you but actually the biggest success in it world had this success DUE to illegal copies: Microsoft Windows!

And they silently allowed it. they started to close this down the first time with windows XP.

p.s. there are many many other examples btw.

Yes the choices are OSX Windows and a distant third Ubuntu. The rest don't exist in public's opinion (your opinion doesn't matter you do not represent the majority get used to it). Content providers aren't the evil enemies. They choose to support some systems and not others. Just like Valve chose Ubuntu 12.04 for now. It's just a matter of resources. And they will support the most popular first. So Ubuntu does want to improve it's marketshare so they get on content provider's radar so they can continue to improve the market share and so on and so forth. You can choose Slackware if you like or even something even more obscure, but don't hope that you will get content there. You can probably realize why it's better to have early access than wait 10 years until you get that content on your obscure platform.

I am not saying that Ubuntu should become closed source, just that it should provide some ways for some content providers to obfuscate how they do their thing. Just like the closed drivers we have now. Not a perfect solution I know but it doesn't matter what I want, but what they want since they have more power and Ubuntu is trying to enter their graces. If they think that security through obscurity works then so be it. We're not the ones to tell them how things get done.

I don't like insulting people but - we don't care about public opinion, idiot. The public's opinion of whether or not running Linux is useful, productive or troublesome - doesn't matter. The majority's opinion doesn't matter here. We run GNU/Linux systems because we want to. We use free and open source software because we want to. Because we trust it more than closed source software. So we can tinker with it. Experiment away. To me there's so much freedom to experiment and learn just like I used to do when I was young - opening up radios or toys to see how they worked. Any computer science student or indeed any scientist can see the value of open source software - we can learn so much and we are free to share what we learn and create. We don't have to use restrictive licenses. If all we had were closed source systems like Windows or MacOSX or countless other ones, then computer science would not be able to progress the way it has so far. It's because people had the freedom to experiment with their systems the way they wanted to - without that kind of freedom none of the current "tech giants" would have existed.

Also, there's no such thing as content providers supporting systems - that's bullshit. All they provide is content - video and audio files encoded in certain formats. And VLC, ffmpeg can play a large majority of those formats.