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+layout: post
+title: Why Collabora really added Digital Restrictions Management to Weston
+tags: [wayland, drm, philosophy]
+---
+
+A recent article from Collabora, [Why HDCP support in Weston is a good
+thing][collabora article], proports to offer a lot of insight into why
+[HDCP][hdcp] - a Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) related technology - was
+added to [Weston][weston] - a well known basic Wayland compositor which was once
+the reference compositor for Wayland. But this article is gaslighting you.
+There is one reason and one reason alone that explains why HDCP support landed
+in Weston.
+
+[collabora article]: https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2019/10/03/why-hdcp-support-in-weston-is-a-good-thing/
+[hdcp]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content_Protection
+[weston]: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/weston
+
+Q: Why was HDCP added to Weston?
+
+A: \$\$\$\$\$
+
+Why does Collabora want you to *believe* that HDCP support in Weston is a good
+thing? Let's look into this in more detail. First: *is* HDCP a bad thing?
+
+DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) is the collective term for software which
+attempts to restrict the rights of users attempting to access digital media.
+It's mostly unrelated to Direct Rendering Manager, an important Linux subsystem
+for graphics which is closely related to Wayland. Digital Restrictions
+Management is software used by media owners to prevent you from enjoying their
+content except in specific, pre-prescribed ways.
+
+There is universal agreement among the software community that DRM is
+ineffective. Ultimately, these systems are defeated by the simple fact that no
+amount of DRM can stop you from pointing your camera at your screen and pushing
+record. But in practice, we don't even need to resort to that - these systems
+are far too weak to demand such measures. [Here's a $100 device on Amazon which
+can break HDCP][amazon]. DRM is shown to be impossible even in *theory*, as the
+decryption keys have to live somewhere in your house in order to watch movies
+there. Exfiltrating them is just a matter of putting forth the effort.  For most
+users, it hardly requires any effort to bypass DRM - they can just punch "watch
+[name of movie] for free" into Google. It's well-understood and rather obvious
+that DRM systems completely and entirely fail at their stated goal.
+
+[amazon]: https://www.amazon.com/HSV321/dp/B07C6KCBYB
+
+No reasonable engineer would knowingly agree to adding a broken system like that
+to their system, and trust me - the entire engineering community has been made
+well-aware of these faults. Any other system with these obvious flaws would be
+discarded immediately, and if the media industry hadn't had their hands firmly
+clapped over their ears, screaming "la la la", and throwing money at the
+problem, it would have been. But, just adding a broken system isn't necessarily
+going to hurt much.  The problem is that, in its failure to achieve its stated
+goals, DRM brings with it some serious side-effects. DRM is closely tied to
+nonfree software - the RIAA mafia wants to keep their garbage a secret, after
+all. Moreover, DRM takes away the freedom to play your media when and where you
+want. Why should you have to have an internet connection? Why can't you watch it
+on your ancient iPod running Rockbox? DRM exists to restrict users from doing
+what they want. More sinisterly, it exists to further the industry's push to
+end consumer ownership of its products - preferring to steal from you monthly
+subscription fees and lease the media to you. Free software maintainers are
+responsible for protecting their users from this kind of abuse, and putting DRM
+into our software betrays them.
+
+The authors are of the opinion that HDCP support in Weston does not take away
+any rights from users. It doesn't *stop* you from doing anything. This is true,
+in the same way that killing environmental regulations doesn't harm the
+environment. Adding HDCP support is handing a bottle of whiskey to an abusive
+husband. And the resulting system - and DRM as a whole - is known to be
+inherently broken and ineffective, a fact that they even acknowledge in their
+article. This feature *enables* media companies to abuse *your* users. Enough
+cash might help some devs to doublethink their way out of it, but it's true all
+the same. They added these features to help abusive companies abuse their users,
+in the hopes that they'll send back more money or more patches. They say as much
+in the article, it's no secret.
+
+Or, let's give them the benefit of the doubt: perhaps their bosses forced them
+to add this[^1]. There have been other developers on this ledge, and I've talked
+them down. Here's the thing: it worked. Their organizations didn't pursue DRM
+any further. You are not the lowly code monkey you may think you are. Engineers
+have real power in the organization. You can say "no" and it's your
+responsibility to say "no" when someone asks you to write unethical code.
+
+[^1]: This is just for the sake of argument. I've spoken 1-on-1 with some of the developers responsible and they stand by their statements as their personal opinions.
+
+Some of the people I've spoken to about HDCP for Wayland, particularly for
+Weston, are of the opinion that "a protocol for it exists, therefore we will
+implement it". This is reckless and stupid. We already know what happens when
+you bend the knee to our DRM overlords: look at Firefox. In 2014, Mozilla
+added DRM to Firefox after a year of fighting against its standardization in the
+W3C (a [captured][capture] organization which governs[^2] web standards). They
+capitulated, and it did absolutely nothing to stop them from being steamrolled
+by Chrome's growing popularity. Their market-share freefall didn't even slow
+down in 2014, or in any year since[^3]. Collabora went down without a fight in
+the first place.
+
+[capture]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
+[^2]: Or at least attempts to govern.
+[^3]: [Source: StatCounter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:StatCounter-browser-ww-monthly-200901-201905.png). Measuring browser market-share is hard, collect your grain of salt [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers).
+
+Anyone who doesn't recognize that self-interested organizations with a great
+deal of resources are working against *our* interests as a free software
+community is an idiot. We are at war with the bad actors pushing these systems,
+and they are to be [given no quarter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_quarter).
+Anyone who realizes this and turns a blind eye to it is a coward. Anyone who
+doesn't stand up to their boss, sits down, implements it in our free software
+ecosystem, and cashes their check the next Friday - is not only a coward, but a
+traitor to their users, their peers, and to society as a whole.
+
+"HDCP support in Weston is a good thing"? It's a good thing for *you*, maybe.
+It's a good thing for media conglomerates which want our ecosystem crushed
+underfoot. It's a bad thing for your users, and you know it, Collabora. Shame on
+you for gaslighting us.
+
+However... the person who *reverts* these changes is a hero, even in the face of
+past mistakes. Weston, Collabora, you still have a chance to repent. Do what you
+know is right and stand by those principles in the future.
+
+---
+
+P.S. To make sure I'm not writing downers all the time, rest assured that the
+next article will bring good news - RaptorCS has been working hard to correct
+the issues I raised in my last article.