Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenophon
This observation holds equally for my position (it's a sale, dammit!) and yours (it's a license, you fool!).
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Can't it be both? The sale of a license.
There's compelling (and educational) arguments from both ends. My confusion is due in part to the "it" referred to when people say "I own it." You didn't purchase that file, you created it. When we say "send a file," it's merely a useful shorthand for what really happens, because digital files don't actually move from one place to the next (do they?). "Send" a file by way of ethernet, with no device at the other end. Unplug the cable from the source. The file isn't stuck inside. All you did was pay someone to communicate instructions on how to manufacture something using your own equipment. You can do this yourself with a scanner, a computer, and a printed book you purchased, albeit more laboriously. But there are restrictions governing that-- restrictions that state that what you created still isn't quite "yours" to do with as you please, even though you own the equipment used to do it.
Purchase of that communication comes with certain terms, the spirit of which is prevention of you providing that same communication to someone else, because you don't own that right (which is why some people can charge for it, and others cannot..legally). Don't like the terms? Don't pay for the communication. Being that the buyer is a complete stranger, and considering the ease of re-manufacture and distribution once the cat is out of the bag, as it were, the seller has tailored that communication to prevent violation of those terms (with varying efficacy). If the mechanism used to do this is unreasonably oppressive, well that's one thing. The spirit of it, and its very existence, is reasonable. Hence, I find arguments for "reform DRM" sympathetic, more so than "abolish DRM."