Tech Advocacy Group Takes to the Streets to Protest DRM at WinHEC
By Alexander Grundner |
May 24th, 2006
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We’re all familiar with protests against war, cruelty to animals, and such, but how about DRM (digital rights/restrictions management)? Enter Defective By Design, an anti-DRM advocacy group backed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) that has started targeting “Big Media, unhelpful manufacturers and DRM distributors.” The group aims to identify “defective” products for consumers and recruit technologists to help bring awareness to the public of the evils of DRM – even if it means having to wear hazmat suits to get people’s attention.
Such was the case yesterday at WinHEC when Defective By Design protested outside of the conference in Seattle and tried to disrupt Bill Gates’ keynote where he described new DRM features integrated into Windows Vista to bring premium content and services to the platform.
Peter Brown, Executive Director of the FSF, makes the case:
[C]omputers, high-definition screens, phones, music players and video players that are currently being sold are “defective by design”. These products don’t respect the user’s right to make private copies of their digital media. These devices make no provision that would allow art, literature, music or film to ever fall into the public domain. Effectively, the media purchased for these devices does not belong to the user — rather, the networking of these DRM’d devices means that as the user watches a film, reads an e-book or switches channels on their HDTV, their habits can be recorded and actions monitored. The result is that over time, DRM technology will negate, if not completely eliminate, the rights of the individual.In any other industry, such limitations or invasions would be considered major flaws. A media player that restricts what you can play is like a car that you won’t let you steer. Products containing DRM are defective — only, unlike other products, these defects are deliberately created by an industry that has long stopped caring about us.
No doubt, the group will have an impact on the industry that wants to keep pulling the wool over our eyes (especially if they can get some television coverage), but it’s yet to be seen if taking a more public and in-your-face approach against DRM will be effective. As one Digg member put it: “[O]utlandish costumes and overheated rhetoric convince nobody. The vast majority of people don’t know or don’t care about DRM. DVDs are the most successful consumer product in history. iTunes has sold over 1 billion songs.”
Love them or hate them, Defective By Design is taking a stand and making an effort to change the status quo.
AntiMonopoly – 2 hours 16 minutes ago