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26 Feb 2010
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has called for an International Day Against DRM on 4 May.
The organisation hopes to raise public awareness about the ramifications of digital rights management software, and to show public protest.
"DRM attacks your freedom at two levels. Its purpose is to restrict your use of your copies of published works," said FSF president Richard Stallman.
"Its means is to force you to use proprietary software, which means you don't control what it does. When companies organise to design products to restrict us, we have to organise to defeat them."
The first Day Against DRM in October 2006 saw more than 200 organised meetings, thousands of protesting emails and the distribution of 150,000 stickers. There were also hundreds of small-scale protests, including Parisian campaigners handing themselves into the police for breaking DRM laws.
"Informed technologists and activists were instrumental in exposing DRM's harms back when most DRM was anti-copying software," said Richard Esguerra, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and supporter of the Day Against DRM.
"But DRM is now evolving as companies seek to restrict far more than users' ability to copy files. The International Day Against DRM is a fresh opportunity to rise to the challenge yet again and fight for technology freedom."
The FSF organises regular campaigns against Microsoft as part of its Defective by Design anti-DRM campaign.
When the much-hyped game Spore was launched, thousands of people gave it a one star rating on Amazon for its use of DRM technology.
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Do you agree?
DRM punishes the law abiding not thieves
I have a number of sets of BBC programs on DVD. Every time I want to view them I have to suffer a reminder screens about how I am allowed to use them. These reminders take quite a lot of time and cannot be skipped. It makes sure I will not buy any more.
Posted by: misceng 02 Mar 2010
Against DRM?
My issue is actually with licensing of software. At the time I was quite happy with buying only the licence of a film when I bought the DVD when only DVD players could play the film. In truth, I wasn't even aware I was only buying the licence to watch it so long as it was on the DVD. I am dismayed to discover that today I am committing an offence in the UK if I copy the DVD onto my hard drive media server to watch the same film because the licence does not allow it. Applying DRM to the film to ensure I can't watch the film unless its on the DVD and in a DVD player is unreasonable. What happens when DVD players are no longer made and my player breaks? Of course, the answer is I will have to buy the film again - or rather buy another licence to watch the film on a different media player. I thought, when I bought the DVD that I bought the right to watch the film that was on the DVD on any device that I owned. I was wrong and I don't like the restriction now that the World is moving to other methods of media content delivery. I agree with DRM where it protects the owner of the film, software or other media from theft. I disagree with DRM where it stops me from using that media I lawfully purchased but can only play it on the device the licence restricts me to.
Posted by: Tadanori 26 Feb 2010