Jeremy Allison, who maintains the free/open SAMBA project, has a great editorial on ZDNet today about the impossibility of DRM and why it's important for engineers to say no to management more often.
I always thought Scotty should have said "no" to the captain more often, especially when Kirk would ask for something completely outrageous that, more often than not, violated the laws of physics. But engineers don't like saying no to management, and poor Scotty would end up having to make the magic happen week after week, until even as a child I began to suspect that his skills had more to do with the scriptwriters than his deep understanding of the laws of the universe. Still, he did end up with a reputation as a miracle worker, which can't be so bad.
Trying to make Digital Rights Management (DRM) work in the real world is like asking engineers to do "Star Trek" style magic, rather than real engineering. DRM simply cannot work. For less technical readers who might be wondering what I'm going on about, DRM is the attempt to control copying on a digital file, or sometimes even to add a restriction on how many times such a file can be copied. It's usually applied to online music or movies, but it's never sold to the consumer for what it actually is, an added restriction on what can be done with something they've paid for. DRM is always explained as the "wonderful new technology that will help protect your medical records from thieves." The truth is, it can't even do that.
(Thanks to everyone who suggested this!)
