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What is Digital Restrictions Mananagement?

You pay for it; we own it

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 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.

DRM is designed to take 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 1984 distributed through the Kindle store, something that would never have been possible with printed books.

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 our interaction with media, we must fight for the alternative.

What we want

DRM gives media and technology companies have 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 attemts to make every possible use of digital goods something that must be granted permission for. This concentrates all power over the distribution of 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 has increased access to and further democratized media, but they are always fought against at first because they threaten the control which certain powers have over old technology. The printing press threatened 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. Digital media distributed over the internet is the final stage of media convergence with the power to ultimately democratize information. If history is any indication, it is not the media giants who wish to control every aspect of how we interact with our media, but those who champion these new technologies who will lead us into the future.

Unfinished

What do we do?

The best way to fight DRM is to abstain from participating in its use: boycott companies that use it.

Ebooks flyer

Stop Digital Book Burnings

Did you know that Amazon remotely deleted all eBook copies of George Orwell's 1984 from customer's Kindles? They can do this to any book that has been purchased through their store. This is the kind of control made possile by Digital Restrictions Management (DRM).