DRM means authenticating through a server (someplace), correct?

DMCA defines a "technological measure which limits access" (what we informally refer to as "DRM") in 1201(a)(3)(b) as

a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.

Authenticating through a server is one way to implement DRM, but there are many other methods, where DMCA is every bit as applicable.

the DMCA is a thing... but can they do anything if they don't know about you copying/transcoding files to your phone or tablet or whatever?

Generally no, and especially with offline DRM schemes like what DVDs use, the copyright holder can't detect when you read the DVD, so right, you won't get caught. But of course the worst part of DMCA is not that it just prohibits doing things, but prohibits trafficking in tools for doing things. So the software for working with DVD DRM is illegal to create, distribute, sell, etc which means I-know-nothing-about-computers grandma would have to go off the mainstream.

If grandma is a punk rock computer user, no problem. But most people these days apparently want to go to a centralized authority (probably within their own legal jurisdiction) and just click to install things, and any centralized authority is going to be at least somewhat vulnerable to trafficking charges. Or if they solve that problem by being outside US jurisdiction, they might have payment processing issues.

Again, you're not wrong that you can do these things with DVDs (I see how being able to watch them on an unconnected-to-internet bus definitely helps, compared to proprietary streaming) but there are barriers keeping it from being a general solution for everyone. Media without DRM lacks this problem.

Because that's now how property works.

DVDs use DRM? Then, how do they work on an offline DVD player?

Yes, they use DRM. It's described here .. though the rest of your post suggests you already knew the basics.

And yes, you can play, transcode, backup, etc the data. You're right about that. But unfortunately, you're also right about this:

They fall under the DMCA, that's it.

And that's what causes many of the activities you describe, to be illegal unless you get authorization from the copyright holder.

I point this out not because I'm some kind of Law Zealot, but because many people have inhibitions about violating the law, and while it's extremely unlikely you'll get caught, it nevertheless does come with some slight risk.

Offering DVDs as an example of "they can't take it away," like I said, is technically correct, but DVDs are nevertheless a poor example, since so many routine tasks involving them, are illegal. Illegality tends to be a barrier to mainstream acceptance, and hampers utility in other ways.

Matroska files would be a better, more consumer-friendly example of "they can't take it away", since working with them doesn't come with as many legal difficulties (since there's no DRM, so DMCA doesn't apply).

AI-enhanced robotics will replace humans on a number of manual labor positions, but adoption will be a matter of scale. Because mobile robotics will always be expensive, they'll only be adopted where each can do the job of 10+ humans on a near 24 hour basis. Farming is a good example of where mobile robots will eventually be widely adapted. They'll pretty much pay for themselves on very large farms. But your plumbing contractor will never reasonably be able to afford them considering how much work each employee gets. You can only work on one toilet at a time, one house at a time. The scaling simply isn't there for small businesses with skilled workers. Same thing for small to medium scale construction contractors. You might see robots supplementing men on big city skyscraper projects, but not doing home renovations or pouring a new driveway at someone's house.

Everyone needs a degree now because we watered down high school and made it worthless, then we banned companies from using IQ tests to select workers, and so the college degree became a stand in for "He's probably smart enough to do this". But now we're watering down the Bachelor's Degree, too, because it's unfair if everyone doesn't have a college degree or some nonsense.

That is flat out wrong. The goal was specifically to replace human beings in a wide swath of positions.

What makes AI unique is that, unlike say, the spreadsheet, it wasn't created to make workers more productive with some skill training. It was created to completely replace a major chunk of knowledge workers, maybe most of them. And it will. AI is a jobs extinction level event. Manual work will be unaffected... AI can't fix your toilet or lay mortar in a construction site, but it's going to be the asteroid that kills off most coding jobs, financial analyst jobs, and a huge chunk of administrative jobs. The software dev positions that remain will mostly be for maintaining AI. All that "learn to code" advice from just a few years ago? Unless you're going into a hyper-specialized software field, requiring years of education and training, you're pretty much going to be obsolete, soon. And I mean soon as in "this decade", not some ambiguous date down the road. So not only will fields like software completely change, but the education ecosystem that served them is going to undergo a serious culling as well. No more coding camps, boys.

Yeah, I was trying to sell some fake patents to Harcourt Fenton Mudd's mother, and she reminded me that unless I presented a fraudulent offer, I might not make a sale to her at all.

As if powerful men haven't done this since, oh, Eternity.

Forget that he's Donald Trump for a second. With his wealth alone, he has a status that 99.999 percent of men will never have. And such men have legions of young, hot women just waiting to take the place of the current model on his arm. It's human nature, and it'll never end. High status men will always attract flocks of willing young women that will do anything to be on their arm and in their bed.

Like books, once you own a DVD it's yours. No one can take it away, alter it, or prevent you from watching when you want. It's always yours.

While that is technically correct ("the best kind...") it's legally incorrect.

DVDs use DRM. So, at any time, the copyright holder can revoke your authorization to watch them, even if there's no technical means to prevent you. (That's assuming they ever granted authorization to watch them in the first place, which is actually pretty unclear. Nowhere on a DVD or its case or paperwork have I seen any text suggesting that the copyright holder has granted permission to watch the DVD. I guess it's just sort of implied.)

DMCA makes it illegal to decrypt DRMed content without authorization from the copyright holder. Authorization is not something you buy (check your receipt; do you see it there?), so it's one of those things which can be given and taken away, at will. And (see above) that can be done without any communication or the consumer's knowledge. What you did legally a week ago might be illegal today, without any communication given to you.

Since you own and physically possess the DVD, you can still do it, but it might be illegal.

DMCA needs to be repealed before there will be any coherent policies that consumers will be able to make unambiguous sense of. So I think even for situations where the content isn't licensed, it's probably best to avoid the word "buy" if there's any DRM.

I just wanted to remind everyone: you agree to my terms.

I'm told that a few of you supposedly didn't realize that you agree to my terms, so I'm just reminding you.

It's easy to forget how utterly fucked up things have become, compared to how a few decades ago, we(? well, at least I) thought things would evolve, and one of those has to do with dedicated services for secure communications.

The thing that defies my predictions, is that dedicated services for secure communications, exist at all.

When you wanted to secure email, you didn't use a "secure email" service; you (the user!) just added security onto your insecure email service. Send a PGP/MIME message and the email provider doesn't give a damn that it's encrypted, it just cares about SMTP.

But these days (could I call it the "Age of Lack of Standards"?), everyone is trying to manipulate you into depending on their software and services (inextricably linked; you can't use their software without their service, or their service without their software), so you can't just replace the service or easily "tunnel" security through their presumably-insecure (perhaps even mandated insecure) service. Whatever security they offer, is all you can reasonably get (pretty much the opposite of the classic email situation).

Why do I bring this up? Because the regulations are all about services! Not protocols. Not software. Services. (emphasis mine in all below quotes)

Here's the beginning of The UK Online Safety Act (1)(1)(a):

imposes duties which, in broad terms, require providers of services regulated by this Act to identify, mitigate and manage the risks of harm

Here's good 'ol CALEA (US Code title 47 Section 1002 (a):

Except as provided in subsections (b), (c), and (d) of this section and sections 1007(a) and 1008(b) and (d) of this title, a telecommunications carrier shall ensure that ...

CALEA even mentions encryption:

A telecommunications carrier shall not be responsible for decrypting, or ensuring the government’s ability to decrypt, any communication encrypted by a subscriber or customer, unless the encryption was provided by the carrier and the carrier possesses the information necessary to decrypt the communication.

I haven't dived into the details of EU's DSA, but I see a hopeful sign right there at the very beginning of Article 1:

The aim of this Regulation is to contribute to the proper functioning of the internal market for intermediary services by setting out harmonised rules...

Look at all those references to services! Not the code you run; the services you use.

What does it mean? I think it might mean that even in the UK(!) you might be perfectly fine and legal using secure software. You just can't have it rely on some coercible corporation's secure services. Send your encrypted blobs over generic protocols and un-dedicated services, and the law won't apply to your situation. I'm not necessarily saying "Make PGP/MIME Great Again" but I do think following in its spirit is a really great idea.

If you run a service, what you want to be able to tell the government (whether it's US or UK or France/Germany) is "we don't provide any encryption, though some of our customers supply their own."

Stop asking for secure services. Worse is better. Ask for secure software (which assumes that all services are completely hostile) decoupled from any particular service.

There are a lot of details you donâ(TM)t have right here. For example many places require landlords to allow you to have a licensed contractor install a EV charger, and most landlords are fine is you pay someone qualified to improve their property. Second example there are a lot of solutions for charging multiple EVs by hooking them all up overnight and the chargers figure out how to allocate the limited power.

that doesnâ(TM)t mean there are no issues. For example renters are not wild about spending say $350 to improve a landlordâ(TM)s property even if they get use of the improvements for a year or two.

I use to rent a place in CA with a small garage (or really half the garage had been converted into another bedroom). What was left of the garage was the laundry area and tool storage. Car was in the driveway.

The driveway right in front of the garage, which is super common. EV charger ended up in the garage (shared the 30A with the dryer, auto switch that gave the dryer priority when it was on, otherwise the EV got it).

No problem, charge cable went right under the garage door. I guess if someone had wanted to steel $1 worth of electricity per hour they could have done it while I wasn’t parked. Nobody ever bothered to. So I really don’t see “all the junk” in garages blocking EV adoption. It isn’t even a speed bump. Maybe not having a garage at all, but even then if you have a driveway you can make it work.

On street parking is where it starts falling apart. When you can’t be sure you will get to park in front of your home, or if you can’t always do that, if you aren’t “allowed” to run power from your house across the city “right of way” on your own property to your parking space, that could be a problem.

It's a six mile chunk of rock. Should this really be classified as a Moon? It's basically an asteroid in temporary orbit.

Well, some of that is for classes for people who can't see that default 3-pixel wide scrollbar on Windows 11 in high contrast dark mode. :-)

Fair. Just making fun of Windows 11.

Yeah, you're blessed to have one of each. Until they start conspiring against you, which you KNOW is going to happen.
ha!

Hopefully we'll raise them better than that. And let them see us honoring our parents.