FYI - What is DRM? An article from Defective by Design.
April 20, 2007
[Thanks to Chris Brand for this tip]
Big Media describe DRM as Digital Rights Management. However, since its purpose is to restrict you the user, it is more accurate to describe DRM as Digital Restrictions Management. DRM Technology can restricts users’ access to movies, music, literature and software, indeed all forms of digital data. Unfree software implementing DRM technology is simply a prison in which users can be put to deprive them of the rights that the law would otherwise allow them.
After months of campaigning during 2006, DefectiveByDesign.org declared Tuesday October 3rd an international “Day Against DRM”. With more than 10,000 technologists having joined in the campaign and pledged to take direct action to stop DRM, and with more than 200 “actions” planned across the globe on October 3rd, we had achieved our goal of raising public awarness to the threats possed by DRM.
Now we must move from awareness of DRM to rejection of DRM. DRM technology is not vanquished. It is still a growing problem for all computer users, and by extension all of society. DRM is being used to restrict individuals’ use of their own copies of published works. To enforce these restrictions, DRM software, and now hardware, must monitor and control a computer users’ behavior. Frequently it reports on what it sees.
You might be aware that iPod users are restricted from transferring their music to other non-Apple devices because the music downloaded from iTunes is encrypted - locked with DRM. It allows you to write an audio CD, but if you ever want to take your music to a new portable device in a compressed format, you will end up with very lousy sound quality. These drawbacks are of course there for a reason: customer lock-in. Apple inconveniences its customers into binding themselves to Apple products.
This type of nuisance is but the foreshadow of greater ones to come. Standing behind the technology companies, the film and music industry (Big Media) loom large. To increase their control, they demand technology companies impose DRM. The technology companies no longer resist. Of course many of the technology companies now see themselves as part of Big Media. Sony is a film and music company, Microsoft is an owner of MSNBC, and Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, sits on the board of Disney. These technology companies cannot be expected to serve the interests of the technology consumer.
