I've been thinking about the controversy of MS Recall.

The very minimum required is "Opt In" vs "Opt Out". And they seem to have listened to those of us who have howled against this. So now it is Opt Out, which is "ok".

However, it's still too tied to the OS. It comes by default with it.

SOLUTION 1: SELL SELL SELL!!!

I think the proper way to handle this is to make it a completely separate product from the OS, and not something installed at runtime.

Further, if MS really believes in "The Market" and the product is actually wanted by end-users, then they should have no problem handling the situation like we used to do in the 90s.

ACTUALLY SELLING SOFTWARE. ADVERTISE. SELL.

OS users are a captive audience, and with "always on" internet the temptation is to make everything a service. And shove it down the user's throats.

I am more and more convinced they want to return to the old days where users worked at a dumb terminal, and everything moves to the cloude.

I don't trust that the "edge" portion of the AI/Recall stuff is actually going to remain as such. They have shown time and time again they don't respect user settings.

So. Put your money where your mouth is and work for it, MS. SELL your product, CONVINCE us it's worth it, and MAKE us pay. If you can't sell people on it, we shouldn't be held captive to your trickery. I'm not even saying it has to be a 300 dollar item. Make it 50 bucks. Just so people who want it have to put a little skin in the game.

Field of Dreams: "If you build it they will come." That's the whole schtick of marketing.

SOLUTION 2: DRM Yourself

MS says they will scrape anything on the screen, even passwords. Of course, there is one thing they won't scrape, DRM-ified content. The DMCA makes it illegal to do so, even if they wanted to, and they have to reinforce the "digital rights" ideology because to not do so would mean all the Anti-Piracy Propaganda they subjected us to was a joke (let's ignore the concept of generative AI being sucking up user's data to train their models).

There is an abuse of power, as they state that their own Edge browser will protect the passwords, but Chrome and Firefox won't have the same protections. I remember when we went after MS for this sort of thing. Lately, thankfully, the FTC(?) has been pursuing anti-trust against these Big Tech companies. While not against MS for this, they are being reviewed is my understanding.

So - what can we the free/open source community do to fight this sort of thing? The first, is obviously, switch OSes, but there are plenty of people who can't or won't (and that's valid, Linux/FreeBSD and other open OSes aren't for everyone)

Well - if DRM is verboten to the MS team, the obvious answer is to build a shield against their viewing.

BUILD A WALL! BUILD A WALL (of DRM). Usually DRM has been used by giant corps to defend their IP. As such we have often taken a strong stance against DRM due to the strict ways in which they demand we use their media (even if it goes against the traditional "Fair Use" concepts for the end users).

Let's take that back. FF should start to use DRM to essentially encrypt the entire browser session from prying eyes. Using DRM would shield MS from being able to view the content of pages.

I am unsure to what level we could pursue this, but I think ultimately DRMifying the app itself - not just the web content, would be ideal. That way even the process of selecting menu items would be hidden from the screen shots.

I have also seen calls lately for similar approaches to email clients. Great minds think alike, methinks.

While I think some people are saying this in jest, and we shouldn't wish to reify the entire concept of IP and DRM like this. We ultimately should not be refused the tools that they use. The whole "You cannot destroy the master while using the master's tools" is a joke, and, yes, sometimes, the master's tools are the only tools around, so it's time to take up the mantle of DRM and hoist that flag of digital privacy rights and fire it right back at them.

Fight Fire with Firefox.