"But those economic harms are only the tip of the iceberg. Laws like DMCA 1201 incentivize DRM by promising the power to control competition, but DRM's worst harms are in the realm of security. When the W3C published EME, it bequeathed to the web an unauditable attack-surface in browsers used by billions of people for their most sensitive and risky applications. These browsers are also the control panels for the Internet of Things: the sensor-studded, actuating gadgets that can see us, hear us, and act on the physical world, with the power to boil, freeze, shock, concuss, or betray us in a thousand ways.
The gadgets themselves have DRM, intended to lock our repairs and third-party consumables, meaning that everything from your toaster to your car is becoming off-limits to scrutiny by independent researchers who can give you unvarnished, unbiased assessments of the security and reliability of these devices.
In a competitive market, you'd expect non-DRM options to proliferate in answer to this bad behavior. After all, no customer wants DRM: no car-dealer ever sold a new GM by boasting that it was a felony for your favorite mechanic to fix it."
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/10/drms-dead-canary-how-we-just-lost-web-what-we-learned-it-and-what-we-need-do-next
The gadgets themselves have DRM, intended to lock our repairs and third-party consumables, meaning that everything from your toaster to your car is becoming off-limits to scrutiny by independent researchers who can give you unvarnished, unbiased assessments of the security and reliability of these devices.
In a competitive market, you'd expect non-DRM options to proliferate in answer to this bad behavior. After all, no customer wants DRM: no car-dealer ever sold a new GM by boasting that it was a felony for your favorite mechanic to fix it."
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/10/drms-dead-canary-how-we-just-lost-web-what-we-learned-it-and-what-we-need-do-next