oct 3: day against drm

Monday, October 02, 2006 by fiveless
More stuff. Tuesday is day against DRM, and as everyone knows, DRM is BAD FOR YOU AND YOUR MUSIC. But seriously enough, digital rights/restrictions management is putting your rights as a user at risk, and basically giving the control of your music, your software and your computer into the hands of the corporations who advocate DRM.
You guys may or may not be aware of how this whole DRM thing started to come to light in 2005 when Sony released a number of rootkit infected music CDs that restricted your ability to copy and transfer music ripped from the CD by means of a programme, which conveniently sends info on your computer to Sony (noSy if you want) while it does that.
You can also see this at work in your iPod (if you have one). Users are restricted from transferring music files from the iPod to other non-Apple devices, locking in users to Apple products. Ditto for stuff downloaded from the iTunes store.
More recently, Microsoft's new Zune mp3 player would disallow over-the-air transferred music from being played more than thrice, and likewise with the new Windows Media Player 11.
Defective by Design, a movement against DRM, puts it in more elegant words.
What does this mean for the future? No fair use. No purchase and resell. No private copies. No sharing. No backup. No swapping. No mix tapes. No privacy. No ownership. No commons. No control over our computers. No control over our electronic devices. The conversion of our homes into apparatus to monitor our interaction with their copyrighted works.

Yup. Get something for your blog or make a public statement, or spread the word. Whatever, DRM sucks and you know it.
Just a little publicity on my part, seriously this is a step backwards.