Friday 72-year-old Richard Stallman made a two-hour-and-20-minutes appearance at the Georgia Institute of Technology, talking about everything from AI and connected cars to smartphones, age verfication laws, and his favorite Linux distro. But early on, Stallman also told the audience how “I despise DRM…I don’t want any copy of anything with DRM. Whatever it is, I never want it so badly that I would bow down to DRM.” (So he doesn’t use Spotify or Netflix…)
This led to an interesting moment when someone asked him later if we have an ethical obligation to avoid piracy… First Stallman swapped in his preferred phrase, “forbidden sharing”…
I won’t use the word piracy to refer to sharing. Sharing is good and it should be lawful. Those laws are wrong. Copyright as it is now is an injustice.
Stallman said “I don’t hesitate to share copies of anything,” but added that “I don’t have copies of non-free software, because I’m disgusted by it.” After a pause, he added this. "Just because there is a law to to give some people unjust power, that doesn’t mean breaking that law becomes wrong…
Dividing people by forbidding them to help each other is nasty.
And later Stallman was asked how he watches movies, if he’s opposed to DRM-heavy sites like Netflix, and the DRM in Blu-ray discs? “The only way I can see a movie is if I get a file — you know, like an MP4 file or MKV file. And I would get that, I suppose, by copying from somebody else.”
Sharing is good. Stopping people from sharing is evil.
Abstract credit: https://slashdot.org/story/451774
I disagree on his stance regarding blu-ray discs.
A movie is not software. It can’t control the device you own. You can’t feasibly modify it to make it better.
You pay money in exchange for a physical object you can use to watch that movie as often as you like.
That’s the deal. If it breaks, you have to buy it again if you still want it. Just like you would with any other physical object you buy.
There’s nothing wrong with that.
Java technology is a critical part of the new high-definition video standard, the Blu-ray Disc standard. This is a great time to be Java developer.
Ha you have no idea. They use new BluRay releases to distribute key revocation databases that block your BluRay drive from decrypting disks with older host keys.
Edit: I suggest starting here if you want to know more: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Blu-ray
A BR disc contains much more than just video data. The BR player device contains user-hostile functionality.
For example, firmware updates for various parts of DRM, like HDCP key revocation lists, are distributed with commercial BR discs.
Your playback setup could become permanently broken because you inserted the wrong movie and now your player refuses to send a video signal to your TV, or it suddenly stops accepting discs it did before.