FSF Sees Hopeful Signs Before Sunday's 'Day Against DRM' (defectivebydesign.org)

The Free Software Foundation's anti-DRM initiative "Defective By Design" argues that since last year's annual Day Against DRM, "we've seen cracks appearing in the foundation of the DRM status quo." The companies that profit from Digital Restrictions Management are still trying to expand the system of law and technology that weakens our security and curtails our rights, in an effort to prop up their exploitative business models. But since the last International Day Against DRM, the TPP trade agreement -- a key pro-DRM initiative -- crashed and burned. And our allies at the Electronic Frontier Foundation brought major legal and regulatory challenges against DRM in Washington DC... If we play our cards right, this may be the beginning of the end of DRM.

On Sunday, July 9, 2017, we will channel this momentum into the International Day Against DRM. We'll be gathering, protesting, and making -- showing the world that we insist on a future without Digital Restrictions Management. Will you join us? Here's what you can do now:
They're asking supporters to plan a protest, translate their fliers into more languages, voice support in videos and blog posts, or make endorsements. And you can also join the "DRM Elimination crew" mailing list or their Freenode IRC channel #dbd for year-round conversation and collaboration with the anti-DRM movement -- or simply make a donation to show your support.

Comments

Re:OK, if we're being honest then...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Your logical fallacy is that of the ridiculous example, because everyone doesn't do that.

There is nothing logically fallacious about a reductio ad absurdum argument.

Even if they did, then people would have to get paid through other means, like touring.

And how does an orchestral music composer make their money by touring? An independent game developer? The artist who drew the illustrations for that game's web site? A textbook author? That textbook's editorial team? The thousands of people who contribute to a summer blockbuster movie but aren't the famous lead actors, producers and directors?

The entire point of copyright is that it's an economic instrument. It produces commercial incentives to create and distribute new works, and those commercial incentives allow for paying all the other people who do the behind the scenes jobs necessary for that creation and distribution to happen. You can't just replace entire creative industries and the millions who work in them with a few famous headline acts and charging admission.

Today, work can be funded in a broad variety of means, including crowdsourcing, advertising, direct sales, public performance for hire, public performance for donations, absolutely gratis since the costs have come down so much and so many more people have the necessary skills... Which is why even if we had no copyright law, there would still be content created.

Unfortunately, none of those alternative methods has yet proven to be anything like as effective at supporting the creation and distribution of new works as the copyright model. That is why, if we had no copyright law and nothing better to replace it, less content would be created and overall the content would be of lower quality.

I'm not saying content creation would suddenly stop without copyright; obviously that's not true. I'm not saying there's no way we could ever have a better system. I'm just saying we haven't figured one out yet, on the evidence so far, and in the meantime copyright (and by extension, reasonable mechanisms for enforcing it, just like any other legal right) does appear to be relatively effective at what it's supposed to do: incentivize the creation and distribution of more and better works.