Re: Steve Ballmer (and the RIAA, MPAA and AFAA) are watching
Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 3:55 pm
And when no one buys it? Companies go bankrupt, alternatives are found, and the world moves on.Fairportfan wrote:Nopes. Congress will enact a requirement that a.ything capable of playing materials with DRM has to contain this tech.shadowinthelight wrote:The article does not mention PCs but lots of products, like cash registers, arcade games, etc use a modified Windows kernel under the hood. Manufacturers have free, open source alternatives but none that are truly Microsoft compatible. ReactOS gets ridiculed for still being in the alpha stage after so long but the work they've done with such limited resources and personnel is amazing (and completely legal). Imagine if it gains more support and emerges as a viable alternative. Aside from us saving money on computers, hardware makers that need an OS would be freed from Microsoft's licensing fees. It would then become much harder for the **AA Content Mafias to impose their whims without one corporation dominating the market to work through.
Or, conversely, MPAA & RIAA will require allsuch material to be keyed to this.
(Note, this is a worst-case scenario, which i would give no better than a one-in-three chance, if that ... But if the*AAs get behind it solidly, it could happen.)