At the end of the day its the pirates who are maintaining the library of Alexandria of our times. The pirates we insist on vilifying and speaking little of in technical forums even. What does that make those people who stand against those who seek to spread information? No different than the book burners, in my eyes. A shame so many engineers spend their precious time and efforts fighting on what future generations will no doubt see as the wrong side of history, all for a dollar they could easily make elsewhere on less unsavory work.
Alternatively, it's just entertainment and movie DRM is at worst annoying and counterproductive.
In X years time when humanity is struggling to rebuild civilisation in a radioactive wasteland I don't think the main problem will be the inability to find a copy of "Dumb And Dumber To". The real heroes will turn out to have been the contributors to Open Source and Open Access projects - Linux, Wikipedia, etc.
There are better things (often unpaid) developers could be doing than implementing DRM but also much much worse things.
There is quite a spectrum between Dumb and Dumber and the great works of art of our time. What runs in common is that both cases are often withheld from the public due to copyright.
> What does that make those people who stand against those who seek to spread information? No different than the book burners, in my eyes.
You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but it is factually incorrect to state that willful destruction is the same as hindering someone from making another copy of a work.
