| > There's no good-for-society reason behind throttling video download speeds. Google certainly would disagree. Their argument (I assume) would go something like: if people don't pay for content up front and also don't watch the ads then these services can't exist, therefore if these services existing is better for society than them not existing, then it follows that <DRM, etc., fill in the blank> is good for society. You might not like it but a great deal of our economy is built on that premise, so a lot of people and companies have a stake in holding onto such arguments. Such an argument is a serious and honest one, and should be responded to with some care. Outright dismissal is not interesting. > That's because there was a very good reason for that Covid "nonsense" as you put it: reducing infection rates and keeping healthcare systems from collapsing. That definitely turns out to have been false. The models were vastly wrong. We definitely have differential handling of the pandemic, from Sweden, Africa, and some states in the U.S. for example, and those that went all out did not do better than those that didn't. Many people warned that this was overblown, but also many people greatly enjoyed exercising authority, and others greatly enjoyed a sense of moral virtue ("saving grandma") that was unjustified. |