> In an absolute sense maybe not, but you can have decent approximations.
No you can't. It's all inherently snake oil. The nature of the universe is such that if you can see something then you can copy it. Either you get people to respect copyright by believing in the social contract or you lose. There is no technological solution.
> As OP points out, music ended up being ok with watermarking.
Watermarking isn't DRM. (Though it shares a lot of the same failings in the sense that it reduces quality for legitimate purchasers and can be removed by pirates.)
> Hollywood might be ok with something like hardware tokens (which imho would be superior to "just download and execute this blob and shut up").
That kind of hardware is just software embedded in silicon. Any "hardware token" can be fully emulated in software as soon as you extract the keys out of it, which somebody is going to figure out how to do and then tell all their pirate friends how to do. By the time the hardware is in enough hands that you can require it to be used, it's already broken. And you can't patch silicon over the internet, so the pirates win for a decade. Then you come out with some new hardware that pirates have several years to break before it's in enough hands that you can require it again.
> If that was the case, we wouldn't be hearing musicians crying foul about Spotify every other day.
Spotify has DRM. Losing money to competition is not the same thing as losing money to piracy.
> At current prices, that's unlikely. The experience is not terrible with current players either; what drives privacy at this point is mostly price.
It's mostly not. A Netflix subscription is extremely affordable. The problem with it is that their app kind of sucks, and even that is rainbows and sunshine compared to the unmitigated horror of cable TV set top boxes. Movie companies should stick to making movies and leave the software to Canonical and Apple and Google.
> Hollywood doesn't want to give up margins that are unrealistic in the digital age, which is why they fixate on DRM.
Except that those two things have nothing to do with each other.
> There is teaching and there is shaming. Shouting at them that they are morally-corrupt buffoons is not "teaching".
That's because there are three different sets of people: The actual artists, the morally-corrupt buffoons, and legislators. Teaching is what the artists need. The others need something else.
No you can't. It's all inherently snake oil. The nature of the universe is such that if you can see something then you can copy it. Either you get people to respect copyright by believing in the social contract or you lose. There is no technological solution.
> As OP points out, music ended up being ok with watermarking.
Watermarking isn't DRM. (Though it shares a lot of the same failings in the sense that it reduces quality for legitimate purchasers and can be removed by pirates.)
> Hollywood might be ok with something like hardware tokens (which imho would be superior to "just download and execute this blob and shut up").
That kind of hardware is just software embedded in silicon. Any "hardware token" can be fully emulated in software as soon as you extract the keys out of it, which somebody is going to figure out how to do and then tell all their pirate friends how to do. By the time the hardware is in enough hands that you can require it to be used, it's already broken. And you can't patch silicon over the internet, so the pirates win for a decade. Then you come out with some new hardware that pirates have several years to break before it's in enough hands that you can require it again.
> If that was the case, we wouldn't be hearing musicians crying foul about Spotify every other day.
Spotify has DRM. Losing money to competition is not the same thing as losing money to piracy.
> At current prices, that's unlikely. The experience is not terrible with current players either; what drives privacy at this point is mostly price.
It's mostly not. A Netflix subscription is extremely affordable. The problem with it is that their app kind of sucks, and even that is rainbows and sunshine compared to the unmitigated horror of cable TV set top boxes. Movie companies should stick to making movies and leave the software to Canonical and Apple and Google.
> Hollywood doesn't want to give up margins that are unrealistic in the digital age, which is why they fixate on DRM.
Except that those two things have nothing to do with each other.
> There is teaching and there is shaming. Shouting at them that they are morally-corrupt buffoons is not "teaching".
That's because there are three different sets of people: The actual artists, the morally-corrupt buffoons, and legislators. Teaching is what the artists need. The others need something else.