Fight DRM CRAP

Filed in archive Consumer Rights , Privacy & Security on June 6, 2006

DefectiveByDesign was formed by the Free Software Foundation to fight DRM (Digital Rights Management) aka CRAP. I fully support the group and hope you'll join them. DRM has resulted in a trail of DiaRIAA that benefits only entertainment companies and not people. DRM mistrusts consumers. It makes them pay multiple times for media they own, restricts consumer rights, and has damaged computers in the SonyBMG rootkit mess.

More from the group's web page:

"We Oppose DRM!
DefectiveByDesign.org is a broad-based anti-DRM campaign that is targeting Big Media, unhelpful manufacturers and DRM distributors. The campaign aims to make all manufacturers wary about bringing their DRM-enabled products to market. DRM products have features built-in that restrict what jobs they can do. These products have been intentionally crippled from the users' perspective, and are therefore "defective by design". This campaign will identify these "defective" products, and target them for elimination. Our aim is the abolition of DRM as a social practice.

What is DRM?
Big Media would have you believe that DRM stands for 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.

From Richard Stallman, President of the FSF:
"The motive for DRM schemes is to increase profits for those who impose them, but their profit is a side issue when millions of people's freedom is at stake; desire for profit, though not wrong in itself, cannot justify denying the public control over its technology. Defending freedom means thwarting DRM.""