rainwall

Sony has always pushed for exclusive formats that try owned. They had the minidisc when CDs were getting common, and pushed a Memory stick when CF/SD cards starred to pickup steam, on and on.

Some of the formats were actually good, but Sony had them utterly locked down to their own gear so they never caught on.

There is not a “broad, international consensus” on digital locks. This was strictly the US using its trade and soft power to bully other nations into ratifying DMCA-like treatises or risk losing easy trade.

That’s all been blown up now due to Trump and his “tariff all the time” idiocy.

Cory Doctorow has been pointing out very explicitly recently that with the threat of tariffs gone, that other counties should drop these stupid US prompted laws and instead encourage literal hackery in order to make home grown, billion dollar industries circumventing stupid bullshit:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/29/post-american-canada/#ottawa