DRM is Used to Lock in, Control and Spy on Users, Says Free Software Foundation (torrentfreak.com)

In a scathing critique, the Free Software Foundation is urging the U.S. Government to drop the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions which protect DRM. From a report on TorrentFreak:Late last year the U.S. Copyright office launched a series of public consultations to review critical aspects of the DMCA law. FSF sees no future for DRM and urges the Copyright Office to repeal the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions. "Technological protection measures and Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) play no legitimate role in protecting copyrighted works. Instead, they are a means of controlling users and creating 'lock in'," FSF's Donald Robertson writes. According to FSF, copyright is just an excuse, the true purpose is to lock down and control users. "Companies use this control illegitimately with an eye toward extracting maximum revenue from users in ways that have little connection to actual copyright law. In fact, these restrictions are technological impediments to the rights users have under copyright law, such as fair use." Even if copyright was the main concern, DRM would be an overbroad tool to achieve the goal, the foundation notes. FSF highlights that DRM is not just used to control people but also to spy on them, by sending all kinds of personal data to technology providers. This is done to generate extra income at the expense of users' rights, they claim. "DRM enables companies to spy on their users, and use that data for profit," Robertson adds. "DRM is frequently used to spy on users by requiring that they maintain a connection to the Internet so that the program can send information back to the DRM provider about the user's actions," he adds.

Comments

Water still wet, news at 11.

[TellarHK]

And on top of all those things, it's also used to try and ensure that people get paid for the work they do writing software, making movies and other media. Did TFA even mention that at all?

These are all as obvious as my subject line.

BINGO

[davidwr]

There is a legitimate place for DRM: Where you and the customer WANT someone other than the end user or person with physical access to the device to control the software and, by extension, the hardware.

Examples would be:
* Corporate environments, where IT will want control.
* Devices used by children, where parents or schools will want control.
* Devices which are loaned out or leased, such as a leased car or rental car, where the leasing agency may want to disable the entertainment system if a payment is missed (and the person renting the car is told this up front, of course). In the case of a car, of course, DRM's functions would be limited to tamper-protection and to disabling non-essential features like entertainment while the car is not in the possession of the leasing agency.
* The "utility side" of a device such as cell phone, electric meter, cable modem, or cable-TV box, where the end user clearly understands that "part of the box" is intended to be outside of their control by design, no matter who owns the metal-and-plastic (this is similar to the way telephones were in the mid-1970s in the USA: you "owned" the shell, but "leased" the inside from Ma Bell and weren't allowed to tinker with it). In this case, DRM or similar things should be allowed on the "utility side" but prohibited on the "customer side." In the case of a cell phone, this means just the cell-network interface. Regulations would prohibit the use of DRM to gather or keep info that the company would not be entitled to gather or keep otherwise.