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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.
That's what it's for.
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And I'm very glad it occurs!
Crowdfunding is "also used to try and ensure that people get paid for the work they do writing software, making movies and other media." This was first envisioned in 1999 by Kelsey and Schneier as the street performer protocol and later implemented in platforms such as Kickstarter.
The news is that the FSF's opinion has been included in the comments published by the United States Copyright Office from its public consultation about this issue. There was uncertainty as to whether the Copyright Office would accept FSF's submission, as electronic submission required use of proprietary software written in JavaScript, and there was no option for postal submission. So FSF had to hand-deliver its comments to the Copyright Office in Washington, DC, in person.
Copyright maximalism has swung so hard the only sane option is to revoke all of it. THEY scorched the Earth, not us. Copyright today is utterly broken, there is NO valid moral defense for what it has become.
Good-bye
The only lock down on a cell phone should be on the sim with no locked boot loaders or network lock in.
In each of these cases you describe, the owner of the physical device is not its user. Respectively the owner is the company, the school, the leasing agency, or the utility.
But in the case of home entertainment devices sold to the public, the state-law owner is the person who walks into Best Buy with cash and walks out with a device or a copy* of a work. Thus the owner is the user. Yet digital restrictions management blocks the owner from exercising what would otherwise be rights of the owner under statutory limitations of copyright. In particular, DRM abridges the rights of the owner of a copy under 17 USC 107 (fair use for transformative purposes), 17 USC 109 (exhaustion of distribution right after first sale of a copy), 17 USC 117 (making copies or adaptations needed to use a computer program with a particular computer system), and foreign counterparts.
* The law defines "copy" as a physical medium, such as an optical disc, memory card, or hard drive, on which a work is recorded.
Other than digital restrictions management, what's the FSF-approved way for the publisher of an artistic work to offer a service consisting of a time-limited license for a subscriber to experience that work? Is the alternative really to drop rental altogether in favor of selling a durable copy of something that most people are likely to watch only once?
If they are only going to consume the content once, why not distribute a durable copy? Does rental exist because people only want to consume once, or do people only consume once because they have to pay per consumption?
I'll bet video rental wouldn't have existed at all if videotaped movies didn't cost $75 back in the VHS heyday, a price certainly inflated by the movie studios who believed it would undermine cinema viewership.
Odd. All overboarding DRM did was make me NOT pay for software and search alternatives.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Darmark and Jalad
On the ocean, tenagra
Temba his arms wide.