KRkrasin·Jan 14, 2014
first of all, I agree that my message was too short and didn't have any arguments to positively contribute to the thread. Sorry about that.
Now, let me explain how did I come to this comparison (even if it seems rogue). To make it more specific, let's consider Raspberry Pi, which is one of the most open ARM boards and, at the same time, practices DRM. For example, its hardware video decoding capabilities might be unlocked, if a separate digital license is acquired in the store [1].
I am perfectly fine when people voluntarily agree to access encrypted content or "premium" functionality. The problem is that the need to put this DRM to the chip, has led to the decision of the manufacturer to make its GPU core a supervisor. GPU starts to work ahead of CPU, initializes its firmware and starts CPU at some point later ([2]). Additional GPU firmw
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are (provided by a binary blob) may be loaded to support OpenGL and other related stuff [3].
Effectively, even if the user does not want to access an encrypted content or use the "premium" functionality, he is being kept in a jail to make sure this premium stuff is not used. Moreover, the supervisor capability of the GPU chip combined with a binary blob updates, makes it possible for the manufacturer to reduce the amount of allowed to the user.
The user of the device is treated as a customer, and it's the manufacturer who is the owner of the device, not the user.
Given these capabilities of the manufacturer over this aspect of the user life, we may start looking at the definition of slavery [4]:
"""Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation."""
At least half of the definition applies:
1. The customers are treated as property to be sold or rented. There're video dongles/boxes on the market which stream content to the TV. They would often allow only a subset of the video services to be used, even if these services are freely available on the internet. The manufacturers of this devices may actually sell the access to the users of this device to the content providers.
2. The customers may be shown ads against their will and their user experience may be altered by the manufacturer w/o their consent or right to refuse.
Again, that does not happen to the people, it happens to the customers, which appear as a virtual entity applied to the devices, but I really see some similarities.
[1] http://www.raspberrypi.com/mpeg-2-license-key/
[2] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16317623/how-does-raspber...
[3] https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/tree/master/boot
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery