> People don't listen to RMS because he makes no effort to be listened to and constantly takes absolutist stances which only harm what he defends.
I used to feel the same way quite a long time ago before I sat back and asked myself "what is the root cause of my distaste for his method of communicating his ideals?" I found that it was because I hadn't fully grasped his views on an emotional level. This argument that "even though RMS was right, the way he said it was reason not to listen to him" falls back to an appeal to emotion -- the fact he has very strong convictions is not relevant to the discussion of whether his arguments are valid.
But to explain why he is so absolutist, look at things from his point of view. From his view, all proprietary software is an injustice with no exceptions. Any attempt to take away user freedom is similarly an injustice. Now, if you fully accepted that view, how would you act as RMS? Would you make concessions on your sense of morality and ethics? Personally, I wouldn't and I don't.
> In the case of DRM, many people have been talking about this problem for a long time.
And RMS has been talking about the more general problem of user freedom since the very beginning. Not sure what your point here is. RMS is the single reason why we have the free software movement, and that movement came from a philosophical view that is fundamentally inseparable from the other pro-user-freedom sub-movements.
> Who do you fault for alternatives not developing/not catching on in the ebooks/video world? Consumers for making the wrong choices? Companies for not trying hard enough? Governments for not regulating consumer rights?
Governments pandering to publishers for several decades in strengthening the power of copyright through WIPO and similar treaties. Those publishers then had an enormous amount of power over artists. Combine this with the propaganda campaign by those publishers of "intellectual property"[1] to indoctrinate people into thinking that the ethics of property are at all applicable to things that aren't property.
So, at the end of the day, it's the fault of publishers making the government write laws that then unfairly strengthens the publishers' grip on the industry (where the industry is basically any artistic industry), and then using that control to convince the public that the status-quo is entirely justified and not unethical.
By the way, publishers mistreat artists all the time. So literally the only people that benefit from this system is publishers, not the people who actually make the things that you enjoy.
> Implementing optional drm isn't the same thing as enforcing drm.
It's optional for the developer in most cases (apparently writing code without it can be harder if you want to interface with Steam's APIs[1]), but not for the user.
Not to mention that the majority of developers do use Steam's DRM, so it's a bit of a moot point. Even if they don't force developers to use it, they are hardly an "alternative".
> there is no drm free content on iTunes.
That is absolutely false -- all music on iTunes is DRM-free. That may have been true before 2009, but it is not true today. In 2007 Steve Jobs wrote an open letter about Apple's use of DRM and announced they would stop doing it, and in 2009 they had signed all of the necessary agreements with publishers to make all iTunes music DRM-free[2]. It is believed this was in reaction to an anti-trust lawsuit that started in 2005 (that eventually ruled in Apple's favour in 2014 partly because of their decision to no longer use DRM).
Since 2009, iTunes allows you to download any music you've ever purchased as a DRM-free mp3 (which is now patent-encumbered as well). Apple Music is an unfortunate reversal to that previous position (it uses DRM), and interestingly came out the year after the lawsuit was finished.
I used to feel the same way quite a long time ago before I sat back and asked myself "what is the root cause of my distaste for his method of communicating his ideals?" I found that it was because I hadn't fully grasped his views on an emotional level. This argument that "even though RMS was right, the way he said it was reason not to listen to him" falls back to an appeal to emotion -- the fact he has very strong convictions is not relevant to the discussion of whether his arguments are valid.
But to explain why he is so absolutist, look at things from his point of view. From his view, all proprietary software is an injustice with no exceptions. Any attempt to take away user freedom is similarly an injustice. Now, if you fully accepted that view, how would you act as RMS? Would you make concessions on your sense of morality and ethics? Personally, I wouldn't and I don't.
> In the case of DRM, many people have been talking about this problem for a long time.
And RMS has been talking about the more general problem of user freedom since the very beginning. Not sure what your point here is. RMS is the single reason why we have the free software movement, and that movement came from a philosophical view that is fundamentally inseparable from the other pro-user-freedom sub-movements.
> Steam, the #1 platform, doesn't enforce DRM.
That's blatantly false. steam_api.dll implements DRM.
> Who do you fault for alternatives not developing/not catching on in the ebooks/video world? Consumers for making the wrong choices? Companies for not trying hard enough? Governments for not regulating consumer rights?
Governments pandering to publishers for several decades in strengthening the power of copyright through WIPO and similar treaties. Those publishers then had an enormous amount of power over artists. Combine this with the propaganda campaign by those publishers of "intellectual property"[1] to indoctrinate people into thinking that the ethics of property are at all applicable to things that aren't property.
So, at the end of the day, it's the fault of publishers making the government write laws that then unfairly strengthens the publishers' grip on the industry (where the industry is basically any artistic industry), and then using that control to convince the public that the status-quo is entirely justified and not unethical.
By the way, publishers mistreat artists all the time. So literally the only people that benefit from this system is publishers, not the people who actually make the things that you enjoy.
[1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html