Even if we had one, it would not matter in the grand scheme of things. It's economical for them to ignore us and shut us out completely. Who cares about a bunch of Linux guys, right? Just cut them off from the banking system and communications and everything until they conform.
The only way is to make this sort of DRM straight up illegal. Then every computer is a free computer, and they cannot afford to refuse to work on those computers. They have to suck it up.
Governments will never do that though. Citizens having access to free computers is incredibly subversive. Computers have the power to wipe out entire industries, entire economies, entire countries. Computers can defeat police, judges, militaries. They do not want citizens to have unrestricted computers. The thought of citizens having access to technology such as cryptography is offensive and subversive to them. So they will never do this. They will do the opposite. They will look at the little digital fiefdoms the big techs have created for themselves and they will be inspired. They want that sort of control for themselves. And thus we keep inching towards the fabled cyberpunk hellscape that no doubt awaits us, if it's not already here.
>The only way is to make this sort of DRM straight up illegal
I agree with your statement on what needs to be done, but I disagree with the above ^
Companies will always skirt around laws because the dev cycle of regulations is thousands of times slower than the dev cycle of private companies. Just take Apple's intentional malicious app store compliance in the EU as an example. They would rather spend millions in legal fees to not comply than to simply comply. This is a pessimistic view, but it literally happens all the time.
No the reason answer is choice. Making something so good and designing it around freedom and making it sexy is the way to go. Regulation is for people that think they can control human behavior with force, which rarely if ever works.
I used to agree with you but I changed my mind. That view point is overwhelmingly optimistic. It grossly overestimates the ability of the technologically illiterate to care about stuff they don't understand. At the same time, it depends on normal people not only understanding and caring about this but also getting on board with whatever we propose based on principles, often at their inconvenience.
We're already going down that path right now, and we are failing miserably. The only possible result of that path is what's already happening right now. Corporations use their trillions to create nice pretty convenient gratis little digital fiefdoms where they hold all the keys, and people are only too happy to become their digital serfs. People actually see absolutely nothing wrong with sacrificing their freedom and control for security and convenience. In fact they look down on us for eschewing the conveniences of 21st century technology.
Once the monopoly is established, it is simple for them to squeeze out any non-conformers and then tighten the screws on their serfs. This post right here is just one example of the methods they will use to squeeze us out. Every post that contains the word "enshittification" is an example of them tightening the screws on their serfs. We're gonna see an infinite number of these until something is done about it.
The only way I can think of to solve this is to enshrine computing freedom into law. Somebody's gotta decide that this computer freedom stuff is right and just and moral and correct, and literally write those principles into society's code of law. And it's gotta be done without a bunch of industry lobbyists neutering the law to uselessness.
The owner of the machine is whoever bought it for his own use. That human must have absolute control over every last bit of it, lest he instead be controlled by it. A machine controlling a human being without his consent is a violation of his basic human dignity and it should be treated as such. It is his right to be in complete control and any attempt to usurp that control is violence. I've come to believe that anything short of this will fail to stop these corporations.
The only way is to make this sort of DRM straight up illegal. Then every computer is a free computer, and they cannot afford to refuse to work on those computers. They have to suck it up.
Governments will never do that though. Citizens having access to free computers is incredibly subversive. Computers have the power to wipe out entire industries, entire economies, entire countries. Computers can defeat police, judges, militaries. They do not want citizens to have unrestricted computers. The thought of citizens having access to technology such as cryptography is offensive and subversive to them. So they will never do this. They will do the opposite. They will look at the little digital fiefdoms the big techs have created for themselves and they will be inspired. They want that sort of control for themselves. And thus we keep inching towards the fabled cyberpunk hellscape that no doubt awaits us, if it's not already here.