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#drm

14 posts14 participants0 posts today

One of my significant fears about the EU Cyber Resilience Act is that it could be abused by vendors to force DRM-like limitations into consumer products, as Synology is regrettably attempting. arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/0

One of my goals in engaging strongly over the CRA and especially its standards is to ensure that they are written to prevent this, as far as possible. We have now placed many #OpenSource experts into EU standards committees as a result. Can you help?

#CRA @EUCommission #DRM @osi

A Synology DS923+, open to show a Synology (green-labeled) Plus Drive halfway inserted into one bay.
Ars Technica · Synology could bring “certified drive” requirements to more NAS devicesBy Kevin Purdy

"Most modern cars have some kind of internet connection, but Tesla goes much further. By design, its cars receive "over-the-air" updates, including updates that are adverse to drivers' interests. For example, if you stop paying the monthly subscription fee that entitles you to use your battery's whole charge, Tesla will send a wireless internet command to your car to restrict your driving to only half of your battery's charge.

This means that your Tesla is designed to follow instructions that you don't want it to follow, and, by design, those instructions can fundamentally alter your car's operating characteristics. For example, if you miss a payment on your Tesla, it can lock its doors and immobilize itself, then, when the repo man arrives, it will honk its horn, flash its lights, back out of its parking spot, and unlock itself so that it can be driven away:
(...)
Some of the ways that your Tesla can be wirelessly downgraded (like disabling your battery) are disclosed at the time of purchase. Others (like locking you out and summoning a repo man) are secret. But whether disclosed or secret, both kinds of downgrade depend on the genuinely bizarre idea that a computer that you own, that is in your possession, can be relied upon to follow orders from the internet even when you don't want it to. This is weird enough when we're talking about a set-top box that won't let you record a TV show – but when we're talking about a computer that you put your body into and race down the road at 80mph inside of, it's frankly terrifying."

pluralistic.net/2025/04/15/mus

pluralistic.netPluralistic: Tesla accused of hacking odometers to weasel out of warranty repairs (15 Apr 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
#Tesla#EVs#Musk

This is news from a month ago, but apparently YouTube is currently experimenting with adding DRM to all videos, but only if you're using certain clients and your user is in the respective A/B test group.

Normal browsers are not affected, but yt-dlp for example is. (Again, only for _some_ users.)

github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issue

Hacker News has some additional explanations:

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4

In short: No reason to panic, but some concern is appropriate.

New blogpost: "DRM: Digital Restrictions Management Damages Reading Magic"

There was an interesting discussion on the fediverse last night about DRM (digital restrictions management, a form of copy protection designed to limit how you can read the books you buy) and ebooks.

My thoughts about DRM, paying authors, and how, while I very much dislike DRM on the books I want to buy, I can see why an author might be concerned about someone asking how to buy their books without it.

neilzone.co.uk/2025/04/drm-dig

Photo of me, a white man with a short dark beard, and dark hair, smiling at the camera, while sitting in front of a vintage terminal with green text on the screen.
neilzone.co.ukDRM: Digital Restrictions Management Damages Reading Magic
More from Neil Brown

"Donald Trump’s tariffs demand a response. Around the world, that response has defaulted to retaliatory tariffs — a strategy with severe and obvious drawbacks. After years of pandemic shocks and greedflation, people around the globe have severe inflation fatigue, and few governments are eager to risk further price hikes. And while the world is rightly furious at Trump’s talk of annexation and other belligerent acts, that anger is unlikely to translate into popular support for higher prices on everyday goods. If there’s one lesson that politicians everywhere have metabolized over the past twenty-four months, it’s that any government that presides over inflationary price rises is likely to be out of a job come the next election.

Luckily there is another policy response to tariffs — one that will substantially lower prices for America’s tariff-clobbered trading partners while incubating profitable, export-oriented domestic tech firms. These firms could sell tools and services to local businesses, to the benefit of the world’s news and culture industries, software firms, and consumers alike.

That response? Repealing “anticircumvention laws” that prohibits domestic firms from reverse-engineering “digital locks.” These anticircumvention laws stop the world’s farmers from fixing their John Deere tractors; they stop mechanics from diagnosing your car; they stop technologists from creating their own app stores for phones and games consoles."

jacobin.com/2025/04/ip-anticir

jacobin.comThe IP Laws That Stop DisenshittificationLaws included in trade deals protect US companies’ rent extraction schemes and stop us from fixing or improving our own devices — from phones and tractors to insulin pumps. Repealing them will save billions and hit Trump’s donor class.
#USA#Trump#Tariffs
Replied in thread

@rooftopjaxx @hamishcampbell @MediaActivist

Ah, the cockerel crows and the full moon glows, a fine moment to scratch at the compost pile.

You’re right, most are merrily skipping through walled gardens, hashtagging selfies and feeding the #dotcons. But seeds don’t need mass attention, they just do need rich compost. That’s what we need to build. Slow, damp, a bit smelly, but fertile.

The #sheeple and not my flock, they belong to the algorithmic shepherds. We’re feeding the stray goats and curious crows.

You don’t convert people by preaching. You do it by making better paths, ones they choose when the old ones crumble. We don’t sell the #openweb like snake oil — we show it, live in it, fix it when it breaks, and compost the crap. It’s #DIY, not #drm

As for silos and skips, good compost needs oxygen, not airtight boxes. So yeah, a messy open pile — full of half-rotten ideas, posts, drama, even the occasional troll turd.

We trust in tools not gatekeepers, the #4opens are the shovels, rakes, and sieves. The people bring the scraps, and over time, it breaks down into something usable.

No army of mods, no paywalls, simple trust, process, and a lot of patience. Think rural anarchism, not startup governance.

On scaling... Ah, the eternal #techshit question, "Does it scale?" That’s the wrong frame. Nature doesn’t scale, it sprawls.

We’re not building an empire. We’re nurturing a network. Think mycelium, not megastructure.

The #OMN isn’t about numbers. It’s about resilience and agency. If it sprouts in some cracks, the monoculture breaks. And yes, nettles welcome

The #Kolektivas, the #fashernista paradoxes, the semi-anarchic infighting, it all goes in the pile. Break it down, stir it up, give it time…

And what do you get? Fluffy, fertile humus — ready for new growth. That’s the cycle. That’s the plan.