[shmerl]

It's the truth standpoint. DRM is an overreaching preemptive policing, i.e. by its mere definition it's always aimed against the user, therefore it's always an anti-feature.

Things like fourth amendment exist for a simple reason that overreaching policing skews into being abusive. Police could always argue abusive policing "helps prevent crime" same as copyright maximalists could argue DRM "helps prevent piracy". But both would be invalid due to overreaching nature or such policing.

To put this concept into perspective. DRM runs on your personal device, in your personal digital space, for the benefit of someone who tries to police you, treating you as an a priory criminal. So conceptually it's not any better than what fourth amendment is aimed to prevent.

Excusing such concepts with "market forces" is simply cringe.

[billmcneale]

> by its mere definition it's always aimed against the user, therefore it's always an anti-feature.

Describing it as "anti user" is theoretically correct but practically incorrect. It's true that it might prevent mods and possible future uses if the servers go down, but in practice, users don't care, as is demonstrated by the fact that games that contain Denuvo routinely sell in the millions and users have no idea it's even there, and they will never know.

Overreaching?

I don't know. Companies put out a product, you're free not to buy it if you don't like it. That's one of the reasons why I call this natural market forces.

> So conceptually it's not any better than what fourth amendment is aimed to prevent.

That's a gross exaggeration. The Fourth amendment is about unreasonable searches by the government, I completely fail to see how willingly buying a digital product from non governmental organizations is connected to Fourth amendment in any rational way.

Again, at the end of the day, nobody forces you to buy that product, hence "natural market forces".

The fact that millions of these games are being bought every month tells me users don't feel that whatever flaws, perceived or real, Denuvo has matters less to them than playing these games.

[shmerl]

Policing by some corpo isn't better than policing by the government. The basis of why overreaching policing is bad doesn't depend on it. Compare DRM to someone installing surveillance in your house to preemptively "stop any potential crimes" ... namely, by you. Are you going to be OK with that just because it's some corpo doing it and not the government?

You get the point of why the above is wrong. DRM is wrong exactly for the same reason. The ethical problem with DRM is that it invades your digital privacy based on presumption of guilt.

Whether users care or don't care doesn't really affect the concept. A lot of things in digital space are less tangible for people to care becasue they are clueless, which doesn't mean these things aren't as dangerous and damaging when abused.

And those are fundamental problems, before we even get to bad consequences that you mentioned, like DRM damaging digital preservation, losing access to your purchases and so on, which are bad too, but not on the level the above is bad.

So to sum it up, DRM is always anti user in many senses.

[billmcneale]

> Are you going to be OK with that just because it's some corpo doing it and not the government?

If I willingly let them in my home and I knew they were going to do that? I don't really have the option to complain, do I?

Your analogy doesn't make sense. People buy the game, Denuvo is clearly advertised on it. They have the option to not buy the game. Period. It's not overreach if I willingly accepted the reach.

> So to sum it up, DRM is always anti user in many senses.

How do you reconcile this claim with the fact that Denuvo games sell by the millions every month?

[shmerl]

Makes perfect sense to me. But I guess those in denial or DRM proponents will prefer to ignore the obvious.

The abusive and overreaching nature of DRM was expressed pretty clearly by those who actually abused it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

> The industry will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams ... It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what ... Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop this. We will develop technology that transcends the individual user. We will firewall Napster at source – we will block it at your cable company. We will block it at your phone company. We will block it at your ISP. We will firewall it at your PC ... These strategies are being aggressively pursued because there is simply too much at stake.

Note the repeated usage of "your" which increasingly creeps into user's private digital space. Being in denial about this isn't an excuse for these problems.

[billmcneale]

A lot of that verbiage is absurd exaggerations and most of these things never became true.

> Being in denial about this isn't an excuse for these problems.

I'm not in denial, I know exactly what Denuvo entails. Whenever I buy a game with Denuvo (which pretty much never happens any more), I know exactly what I'm giving away, and I'm doing so because I'm getting something in return.

Similar situation to someone dropping their business card in a jar at the exit of a restaurant with the hope they'll win a free meal. They give a bit of personal information because they think they'll receive more in return.

You don't get to take away the choice of customers to decide how to manage their information.

As long as everyone is free to make that choice, nobody is getting hurt and the market forces will ultimately land on an equilibrium, like we have today.

[shmerl]

> A lot of that verbiage is absurd exaggerations

They express the intent behind DRM very precisely. I don't see anything about it being an exaggeration. DRM proponents will try to control as much as they can grab. There is no excuse for unethical garbage like that.