Since Apple switched its hardware line over to Intel architecture, Intel Insider CPU-level digital rights management (DRM) may soon be coming to the Mac. Soon the transition will be complete, and the cloud will turn us all into the digital equivalent of tenant farmers: we’ll never actually “own” the software and music that we “buy” and, since we need to pay for network access indefinitely to “have” the things we pay for, whatever we have can also can be “taken” from us at any time.
There was, though — once upon a time — a Golden Age, when information came on floppy disks, and file sharing was a key selling point for personal computers. Back when, corporations encouraged us to copy files freely between ourselves, and it raised nary an eyebrow to hear that “a hobbyist in Michigan starts a local Apple Computer Club, to challenge other members to computer games of skill and to trade programs.”
