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FSF, Political Activism or Crossing the Line?
orbitor writes to tell us InfoWorld's Neil McAllister is calling into question some of the recent decisions by the Free Software Foundation. From the article: "All the more reason to be disappointed by the FSF's recent, regrettable spiral into misplaced neo-political activism, far removed from its own stated first principles. In particular, the FSF's moralistic opposition to DRM (digital rights management) technologies, which first manifested itself in early drafts of Version 3 of the GPL (Gnu General Public License), seems now to have been elevated to the point of evangelical dogma."
1. You can buy DRM music or not buy DRM music. You have a choice and know what you are buying.
2. Artists can distribute music themselves or through a label. They have a choice.
3. If the artists distribute it themselves, they can protect it with DRM or not protect it with DRM.
4. If the artist goes with a label, the label can choose to protect the music with drm or not protect it with drm
Nowhere is there force and nowhere is there fraud.
Furthermore, artists don't HAVE to sign with a label. Especially with the Internet, they can distribute music without one. If an artist chooses to sign with a label and the label insists on DRM, that is a choice made in a free market.
YOUR argument is that the market is not free because YOU want to buy/download non-drm music. That is not the definition of a free market. A free market is a market without an artificial price mechanism, and a market that is free from force and fraud. Here's a reasonably good wiki article on the subject.