Totally missed this in the business with the moving of the hosts, but today (October 3) was the “Day Against DRM.”
Today is October 3, the International Day Against DRM — the first global day where people rise up and say no to anti-copying technology that treats you like a crook. Remember, DRM doesn’t stop “piracy” — the only people who get DRM infections are people who don’t pirate their media. You get DRM by buying your movies, music, games and books through authorized channels — the stuff you download from P2P or buy off of a blanket at a flea-market has already had the DRM cracked off of it. They say that DRM “keeps honest people honest” — but all it does is keep honest people in chains.
The day was “sponsored” by Defective by Design, and is used to protest Digital Rights Management in all forms. Defective by Design is a project run by the Free Software Foundation. The project website quotes Peter Lee, a Disney executive, who once said, “If consumers even know there’s a DRM, what it is, and how it works, we’ve already failed.”
A large list of things to do to educate yourself (and others) on DRM is available at this BoingBoing post (where the quote in this post is lifted from, verbatim). Support, but a call for a bit more restraint and a bit more education (which I’m ALL for) is available on this Arstechnica post.
