DRM And Free Culture

Authors Jason Self

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DRM And Free Culture Home

I strongly believe in free culture and that all creative works everywhere should be free. Linux-libre
Specifically, people should have:

• the freedom to use the work and enjoy the benefits of using it
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• the freedom to study the work and to apply knowledge acquired from it
• the freedom to make and redistribute copies, in whole or in part, of the How To
information or expression
• the freedom to make changes and improvements, and to distribute derivative Articles
works
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Digital technology has the potential to provide people with all of these freedoms and
liberate our culture. It drastically lowers the barrier for people to create, modify, publish
and distribute creative works. It is a technological innovation that benefits so many of About Me
the people of the world. It could also turn out that digital technology is a disaster for
our culture because of the existence of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM.) Contact Me
Big Media would prefer you to think of DRM as Digital "Rights" Management, but the GPL enforced
term Digital Restrictions Management is more accurate. Most people think that the
products they buy should obey them, not someone else. DRM takes the control of the
product's functionality out of the hands of the owner, overriding it and bending it to the If you appreciate any of the things I
will of someone else. am doing you can make a donation.

For them, the free flow of information and creative works represent a direct assault on
their desire to both control society and profit from the artificial scarcity of creative
works. So, companies have turned down a path to restrict society through both legal
and technological means.

On the legal side, Big Media is spending millions of dollars in lobbying and campaign
contributions in order to induce politicians to pass laws that forbid anyone to break the
digital handcuffs of DRM and to also increase the lengths of copyright. Indeed, the first
federal copyright law gave exclusive control of works for only 14 years. Yet, this has
been distorted to the extent that copyright law now allows for exclusive control for the
life of the author plus 70 additional years. And this has been done without showing
how this huge increase in monopoly control benefits society in any way whatsoever.

On the technology side, Digital Restrictions Management undoes many benefits of
digitization. Sadly, this technology has been embraced by many of the largest
companies in the world including Apple, Microsoft, Disney, Sony, IBM and Intel. DRM
is designed to do one thing: prevent people from exercising their freedom, and doing
anything that Big Media doesn't approve of.

The use of DRM is part of a campaign by Big Media to raise their own profits by
treating people as de facto criminals. It prevents you from using your rightfully
acquired things in a way that is consistent with a person's private property rights. It
prevents you from having the freedoms that everyone deserves. Indeed, people can
use a physical VHS in ways that are prevented with DRM. This is not progress.
Rather, it is an attack on society and on our rights.

This is why we must protest all forms of DRM. On May 4, I hope you will do just that
by taking action in the Day Against DRM.