While I strongly agree with the statement that copyright infringement does not equal theft, you're overreacting. It's even more ridiculous when the article is actually on your side of the argument.
I don't think he's overreacting. I read further, made it almost to the end, but stopped when the author kept re-iterating his "stealing" BS.
So he's against DRM. Fine. He's still repeating the same bullshit propaganda / newspeak that serves to justify draconian "anti-piracy" laws and the continuing attack on civil rights.
As slowpoke says, he continues to discredit those who are opposed to copyright in its current form (which by its very definition violates civil rights, it's just that we never really noticed until technology changed) as thieves and pirates.
The insults and accusations make it pretty obvious who's side he's on.
> New DRM technologies are not innovation, they are a Neanderthal-like reaction. We need distribution innovation. We need learning science innovation. We need total immersion with content innovation. We need production and manufacturing innovation. At this time our industry is staring down the barrel of a powerful gun that can soon dictate the means, price, availability of content creation and distribution if we do not figure out novel ways to move forward
He's both against DRM and against laws nailing down on P2P. The very 'draconian "anti-piracy" laws' that '[continuously] attack on civil rights'.
And not only he is against that but he is also actively doing some fscking thing about it.
In this article, he's not talking to us, who know the deal. He's talking to those who don't have a clue, and those people are talking about "theft" and so on. If you want to make the argument that he makes to such people, you have to talk their language however approximate it is, because if you first spend time what looks like (to them) some technical minutiae, you've already lost because they get lost.
Again, from the article:
> My point here is we need to get creative with piracy and how to work with it instead of thinking DRM, lawyers, or search engine blocks will address the problem.
That's a far cry from the side you're putting it on based on some verbiage.
This article was written by a publisher, O'Reilly, and they are obviously against copying. They don't use DRM because they know that it simply doesn't work, it would be a wasted effort, and as a bonus this way they can look "free", "open" and "cool". Of course they use the words "copying" and "theft" interchangeably, they don't really know or care about the difference, they are just bullshitting.
The sad thing is that publishers could remain relevant
by concentrating on what they did before: selling books
(yes, the real, paper-y ones). Instead they want to use
a technology that is incompatible with their business model
(charging for distribution).
While I personally prefer having electronic copies of books
because I find them much more useful, I know a good deal of
people who still buy physical books for various reasons (one
of which being haptic), so it's not like they will die out any
time soon. Maybe they won't be as profitable anymore, and
eventually fade into obscurity, but that's just the way of things.
As I said, I literally stopped reading. This is a matter of principle for me, because
it in almost all cases, this analogy either means the writer is dishonest and tries to
invoke an appeal to emotion, or that they are uninformed/a victim of industry propaganda -
and I really doubt the latter is the case. This might just be the exception that proves
the rule.