Group: Defective by Design/Frequently Asked Questions

What is DRM?

Digital Restrictions Management is technology that controls what you can do with the digital media and devices you own. When a program doesn't let you share a song, read an ebook on another device, or play a single-player game without an internet connection, you are being restricted by DRM. In other words, DRM creates a damaged good. It prevents you from doing what would normally be possible if it wasn't there, and this is creating a dangerous situation for freedom, privacy and censorship.

If we want to avoid a future in which all information is controlled by just a few companies and our devices serve as an apparatus to monitor and control our interaction with media, we must fight for the alternative.

Why does DRM exist?

While it is advertised as a mechanism to prevent copyright infringement, DRM is actually designed to prevent all of the incredible possibilities enabled by digital technologies and place them under the control of a few, who can then micromanage and track everything we do with our media. This creates the potential for massive digital book burnings and large scale surveillance over people's media viewing habits. These digital book burnings may target any media (literature, music, video, anything) or group of people on a scale we have never come close to in all of human history, and it's already started to happen. In 2009, Amazon remotely deleted copies of George Orwell's dystopian novel, 1984, distributed through the Kindle store. This would have never been possible with printed books.

Who does DRM benefit?

DRM gives media and technology companies the ultimate control over every aspect of what people can do with their media: where they can use it, on what devices, using what apps, for how long, and any other conditions the retailer wants to set. Digital media has many advantages over traditional analog media, but DRM attempts to make every possible use of digital goods something that must be granted permission for and exploited for private gain. This concentrates all power over the distribution of and participation with media into the hands of a few companies. For example, DRM gives ebook sellers the power to remotely delete all copies of a book, to keep track of what books readers are interested in and, with some software, even what notes they take in their books.

Every new technology for distributing information that has lowered barriers to access, produce, and distribute media has been met with resistance from those with the most power and stakes invested in old media, at least until they have engineered a way to maintain their position when adopting the new media. Supposedly, the printing press threatened those who hired scribes, the record industry threatened live music, the radio and later home taping threatened the record industry, film threatened live performances, and vhs threatened film. What they really threatened was who had disproportional power in each. Digital media distributed over the internet is the final stage of media convergence, so it is critical to prevent its monopolization by big media and technology companies.

DRM is about restrictions, not rights

Industry supporters of DRM refer to it as "digital rights management" as if they are the ultimate authority to grant us our rights, as if they are the ones who should have complete and total control over how we use and interact with our media. What they are really doing is managing the restrictions they impose on our media and devices that we would normally have control over in the absence of DRM. We should own our media, not be at the mercy of media companies. For that reason, we refer to it as "Digital Restrictions Management".

What are some examples of DRM?

• You can purchase electronic copies of games from Steam, but you can't sell them or give them to someone less fortunate after you're done playing them. If you so much as try, Steam will disable your account, which takes away your entire game collection.

• During the mid-2000s, Sony bundled DRM with its music CDs that tracked users' listening habits, created security vulnerabilities in their computers, and prevented CD copying software from functioning.

• Netflix has constructed anti-features to prevent customers from viewing their media in certain countries, or on a certain number of devices.

Isn't it a reasonable way to discourage copyright infringement?

DRM is not about protection from copyright infringement. That argument is a strawman attempting to make opposition to DRM appear detrimental to authors, but it's based entirely on a (very successfully advertised) misrepresentation of DRM's purpose. To illustrate the absurdity of the idea that DRM exists to prevent copyright infringement, consider the nature of file sharing. To obtain a copy of a file without permission, downloaders would go to a friend or a file sharing network, not a DRM-encumbered distribution platform.

If DRM existed to prevent that method of copyright infringement as advertised, every distribution method for that particular piece of media must only be distributed by an uncrackable (which is impossible on its own) DRM-encumbered distribution platform. So long as one copy becomes available without DRM, countless more are easily produced. Proponents of DRM are well aware of this, and it is entirely besides their interests.

DRM only restricts and punishes those who acquired their media legally through DRM-encumbered platforms. Without DRM, users have control over their own media such as where, when, how, on what platforms, and using what software they choose to view or use their files. DRM allows service providers to construct antifeatures (literally, features that exist only to worsen the service for users) that take legal rights away in order to be re-sold as a service. This is the defining difference between copyright protection and DRM.

DRM is far more restrictive than copyright, and serves an entirely separate function. DRM is designed to enable service providers to build antifeatures which take away every possible interaction with media through digial technology, regardless of legal rights, and sell some of these functionalities back as services again and again. Copyright is merely the source of power granted to media rightsholders to create, maintain, and enforce the use DRM.

Copyright already provides leverage against illegal distribution, meaning that the largest distribution platforms must already adhere to the demands of large publishers, studios, labels, and software companies. DRM allows them to have much broader control over the use of media than is enabled by copyright law, but copyright allows them to force all legal media distribution services to use DRM.

This maintains the current monopolistic (or oligopolistic) market positions of those big companies at the expense of independent publishers, studios, and labels as well as all media participants. This is not about fair compensation; it's about digitally-enforced exploitation.

Isn't DRM ineffective anyway?

The argument that DRM "doesn't work" because people still find ways to share media is missing the point, because that isn't what DRM is for. DRM is about controlling what legal downloaders can do with their files and has no impact on those who acquire their files outside of DRM schemes. DRM is very successful at is limiting the freedom of anyone who uses DRM-encumbered services so that the company behind said service can sell any and all functionality back to them.

Why is DRM bad for free software users?

DRM is incompatible with free software. In the same sense that you cannot hide something from someone while showing it to them, DRM cannot function while being free software as this would allow the antifeatures enforced by DRM to be undone.

Doesn't DRM make sense for streaming media and rental services?

The problem with this argument is that it invites a future in which nobody has any personal ownership over their own media, and can only access files through DRM-encumbered distribution services. This argument is also based on a misunderstanding of the purpose of DRM, which is not to prevent copyright infringement (see above).

Aren't Hollywood and the media companies really to blame for DRM?

Not exclusively, no. Hollywood and media companies work in partnership with technology companies to create DRM and force all legitimate media distributors to use it so that they, along with their users (and authors looking for publishing/distribution) remain dependent on those giant companies, and the big businesses maintain their market position, which has control over the entire industry.

This page was a featured resource in August 2013.