a broken mold

So, technically, I wrote this post last night and right now I’m whizzing along the highway at 55 MPH, but that doesn’t really matter in the scope of the thing.

I don’t have much to say here, but what little there is, I present. DRM is not intrinsically evil but historically it has been harmful to the public. Of course, this is not to say that companies or individuals attempting to protect their intellectual property are wrong, only that DRM as a method of accomplishing this has been maddening (I got burned), often futile, and sometimes scary (i.e. Amazon yanking 1984 from Kindles). It’s tried but not true, if that’s the right turn of phrase. Companies have used it for a couple decades; it hasn’t worked.

Why I’m writing about this is because today is Day against DRM. So I thought I’d let you know some stuff about it. That is all from me; I leave you with the Free Software Foundation’s history of The Decade in DRM (click through to read more).

Since the late 1990s, a handful of media and technology companies has waged war against the public, imposing digital restrictions on the technology we use.. Here is Defective by Design’s look at some of the most significant events in the past 10 years fighting against DRM. If there are important moments missing (which there may be), please send them to us! Despite a number of victories over DRM in specific areas, DRM is far from dead. Whether companies will control and restrict us through our technology remains to be decided, and the battle is now.