First, as a content-creating individual musician, I am keenly aware of artistic property rights and creative ownership issues. I don't want people taking my work without my approval, any more than anyone else does who values their own time and effort. But it should be up to me to decide and control that process. I don't want someone else doing it for me, because that way leads to Nanny Statism.
So if the companies who are interested in placing their content on the internet want to protect it with DRM, let them protect it with DRM that THEY pay for, that THEY develop specialized software for, DRM that inconveniences only THEIR paying customers. And let them find out that THEIR customers will go elsewhere. Placing DRM in EVERYONE's way is evil.
If another rockbed of Conservatism -- the free market -- were allowed to choose, DRM would slink off and die a rapid death. It is against every tenet of Conservatism to force DRM down the throats of the players in a free economy. That's what this sort of encroachment is intended to do -- make it impossible to avoid it. And you not only support that action, you belittle those who try to defend against it.
I defend MY right to protect MY content however I please, on my own tab, and any company's right to protect THEIR content how THEY please, on their own tab. I don't expect, and I don't want, to see some standardized "protection" end up everywhere allegedly on my behalf, because it won't be what I would want, and it will do a lot of things I don't want done. Including compromise of the free market.
Yet you think that kind of compromise of Conservative principles is a dandy idea. You DO know you sound just like a Nanny Statist when you talk like that, right? Who's the socialist here? Just sayin... :)
I’d be curious about open-source issues here. It reads much like they expect all new versions of web browsers to contain these encrypted players. If it’s open source then it can be trivially hacked to write the decrypted stuff to whatever you want. If it’s closed source then browsers themselves, not just Flash player etc., will have to be licensed out... very much against the spirit of the web. If incorporated it’s going to flub, any fool can see this.