One day, piracy won’t be viable. Some new tech and/or legislation will gradually wipe it out (Eg, required software running on everyone’s machines validating every file, invasive stuff like that could happen in 20 years), maybe not today, but one day. We can’t rely on it
Our ISP reads torrents, then a random content owner sends a nastygram if the name matches something from the last 40 years or so (also depending on how popular).
I mostly download ancient stuff which flies under the radar; that's how I figured the enforcement parameters.
I have been told (but not confirmed) that recent versions of iOS won't let you add non-DRM protected music to your library (and for a monthly fee you can get a service that provides you with DRM protected versions of any non-DRM protected music you have). That seems bonkers to me, so does anyone know what the actual story is there?
Since day one, iOS has never let you just add MP3s to the music library on the phone directly - you've always had to sync it through iTunes on a computer.
This made sense when the behavior was inherited from iPods and two-way sync was difficult, but then they never had any incentive to add the ability once people stopped connecting their phones to computers anymore and they could just force people to buy all their music from them instead.
If you're reading Cory Doctorow books and blogposts, that's exactly what "they" are working on and the part of the population that cares about this may be a lot smaller than you think.
I know they are trying, but there will always be people with the knowledge to resist, like the HN crowd.
I can see more devices like iphones being sold and locked down, but I can't see open computers not being sold anymore, not so long as there are companies and people with a will to make them. Look at System76 as an example.
It's happening already. "Trusted Computing" is only the start. Can you even buy a CPU that isn't filled with that shit? Or a motherboard where every last chip is open/fully documented and verifiable?
