Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
Uh, no. DRM has nothing to do with either actually. As had been thoroughly explained a backup is nothing but a copy of the file and DRM has no effect on copying the file. Nor does it have anything to do with legality. That depends on the particular copyright laws at the location the backup takes place.
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Any backup strategy which doesn't include a strategy for restore is worthless.
It reminds me of the claims a long time ago from a company which claimed to have an algorithm which could losslessly compress literally *any* file, including its own output, such that repeated application of the algorithm would allow any file to be losslessly compressed to less than some specific size (I don't remember the specific size) - which is clearly impossible.
They were able successfully to demonstrate the compression algorithm in action - however they were unable to demonstrate decompression of the resulting files!
A backup which can't be restored falls into the same boat.
I'm sure we all agree that a copy of a DRMed file is a backup that can be restored in some circumstances, but not others in which a DRM-free file would be able to be restored. Hence, the DRM does reduce the *usefulness* of the backup.
Agreed, a meteor strike would also reduce the usefulness of a backup, but my feeling for which set of circumstances is more likely means that I see DRM as having a much more significant impact on the backups.
/JB