“Richard Stallman says that plans to put content control into
industry standard hardware pose a threat to the adoption of free
software. … “This resembles CSS and e-Books: it is another plan
to impose additional power over people who use published
information, on behalf of those who hope to control the power,” he
writes in emails to The Register.”
“This plan seems to pose a threat to free operating systems. We
will surely not be authorized in the US to implement free software
to access any of the centrally-controlled data. So a free GNU/Linux
system won’t be able to do it.”
“If users accept the domination of centrally-controlled
data, free software faces two dangers, each worse than the other:
that users will reject GNU/Linux because it doesn’t support the
central control over access to these data, or that they will reject
free versions of GNU/Linux for versions “enhanced” with proprietary
software that support it. Either outcome will be a grave loss
for our freedom.”