IT Policy Guide/Anti-DRM
Ebooks Anti-DRM Statement
Libraries play an incredibly vital role in society. People trust us with the task of preserving, cataloguing, and providing access to human knowledge. Libraries exist to facilitate the circulation of ideas, because ideas must be circulated to be of value and for new ideas to be generated. Libraries are the embodiment of various utopian ideals: voluntary personal development, free and open exchange of information, shared knowledge production, civic solidarity, and the commons. Inspiring us to add to the sum of human knowledge, the library connects us with the discoveries of our fellow thinkers so that we may stand on the shoulders of giants. These social sites are hubs of our collective insights and creative expressions, quintessential to a free-thinking populace, and the greatest defence against widespread ignorance.
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is antithetical to the mission of libraries and to the very existence of books. While the advent of digital media, information technology and the internet has greatly improved the accessibility of cultural works, the development of DRM has severely impeded those benefits. DRM is a framework meant to supersede copyright law with far more limiting technological restrictions. This is an exploitative tactic that takes advantage of readers without helping authors.
The notion of checking something out is based on physical scarcity; to be enforcing artificial scarcity where no physical one exists is entirely contrary to the purpose of a library. DRM puts private businesses in control of libraries' ability to fulfill their public service mission. If the availability of books is entirely controlled by third-party corporations, libraries will only serve as a temporary and disposable redistributor.
DRM allows ebooks to be remotely destroyed, creating the potential for digital book burnings that can happen instantly, silently, and on a massive scale. People would never allow bookstore employees to enter their homes and take their books back or sign agreements to have their journals confiscated and destroyed after their subscription to them expired. Since encumbered ebooks stay locked forever and prevents legal uses of copyrighted words, DRM renders Copyright irrelevant and eliminates the public domain.
Libraries have also fought for the privacy of our patrons and recognize the total surveillance which DRM can provide. Users are required to use only authorized software and hardware, forcing people to adopt technologies that support this vendor lock-in scheme. Not only can reading lists be tracked, but also every time a book is opened, what pages are viewed, and what notes are taken. DRM requires patrons to cede control of their computers to third-party corporations, so that those companies can restrict when and how users may access "checked out" books or audio files.
As a library, we derive great market power from our many patrons that come to us to discover new books, and we will not allow that power to encourage the use of DRM. Due to legal, technological, and ethical concerns around DRM, we are making a commitment to reject such technologies. We are dedicated to ensuring that readers do not lose their legal rights to technological restrictions as ebooks gain popularity. We are adopting a strong policy against such technologies:
- We will not purchase, lend, or sell devices which require DRM for viewing any media.
- We will not support any platforms which use DRM.
- We will not distribute any DRM-encumbered media.
