My last act as a Hungarian journalist was translating the speech against DRM @pluralistic gave at Microsoft. For free, obviously. By then I was well on the way of becoming a full time Drupal developer but I felt it important enough.

So I am heavily biased towards him. With that disclaimer out of the way https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/ is nothing short of brilliant.

Pluralistic: Why they’re smearing Lina Khan (14 July 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

@chx was that the one from the mid-2000s that started with "Yar"? I helped set that up -- I connected @pluralistic to the person organizing talks for Microsoft Research 😎

EDIT: and here's the link! I had misremembered, it actually starts

"Greetings fellow pirates! Arrrrr!"

https://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt

@jdp23 @chx @pluralistic Speaking as someone that started working at Microsoft back in 2003, I am ASTOUNDED this talk happened. It never would today (not would me working there)

@crowbriarhexe Microsoft Research had a lot of autonomy at the time and prided themselves on allowing critical viewpoints. Also it was still an open question about what to do about consumer DRM -- they released the first version of Zune without DRM. And I had written a BillG Thinkweek paper on "Why Microsoft should abandon DRM" and he had forwarded it on with "not sure I agree but we should think about this" (or something like that).

@chx @pluralistic

@jdp23 @crowbriarhexe @chx @pluralistic always wondered about the inside baseball of 'playsforsure' in that era.