While I appreciate the high-mindedness of the EFF's approach, I wonder if it would be more effective to borrow a page from the Buzzfeed school of attention grabbing. The primary challenge is getting people who aren't techies to care. A headline like "Five Things You Already Do With Your Computer That Could Land You In Prison" is a great way to do this: it's inflammatory, it's emotionally driven, it captures the attention of non-techies, and it can naturally be pivoted into a discussion of why these things are illegal in the first place.
I usually explain it to non technical people some kind like this:
Opposition to DRM can have two aspects, which are good to differentiate to understand the issue.
First reason is ethical. DRM as preemptive policing is insulting in treating all users as potential criminals by default. Its overreaching nature is unethical and as such should be opposed the same way you'd oppose something like police state approach to society.
Second reason is pragmatical. DRM always cripples digital products by reducing usability (To put it differently - DRM always gets in the way of the legitimate user).
There is also another set of reasons which are kind of in between the two above - security and privacy. DRM always can be viewed as security and privacy threat, because the very premise behind the DRM is not trusting the user, assuming all users are potential criminals. As such, DRM usually intends to monitor and limit users' activity, like any policing does, except that DRM does it in user's private digital space, on their hardware, in their systems and programs they run and etc. Since trust should be symmetrical, users should not trust any DRM and should view it as a security and privacy threat, especially since DRM implementation is usually some black box code and you have no clue what it can do. So viewing any DRM as potential malware is a good symmetrical approach to it treating all users as potential criminals (infringers).
I'd say out of these, ethical and security / privacy reasons are most important, while the issue of convenience is less so. However most people concentrate on the later and even came up with a term "DRM that doesn't get in your way". That's simply incorrect - DRM always reduces usability by limiting what you can do with digital product. That's one of the main points in it.
So DRM always gets in your way. Some DRM can be less apparent though, while another can be very much in the face. I'd say actually the first one is even worse (not like some would assume that DRM that doesn't bother their comfort can be acceptable). The reason is simple - if it's hidden and not apparent it must be even more sinister than one that's very obviously deterring your experience. It's like a hidden camera vs an open one. Hidden / "unobtrusive" DRM is worse because you don't pay attention to it and get comfortable with using it.
Yes, that's implied. But you add a good point - DRM doesn't even stop piracy and as such the official reason it's usually justified with is completely invalid. This only strengthens the expectation that DRM is used for completely different purposes, so it makes it more obvious that it should be opposed and never trusted.
Yeah, I just felt like making it explicit. Try finding a Hollywood blockbuster that isn't trivially available on the pirate bay - but they still encrypt and region-lock the DVDs anyway. If they keep a movie from being leaked onto the internet before it launches in theaters, that's a big win for them.
I updated the phrase. That's a good point to direct to publishers who aren't crooked but are mistakenly trapped in this DRM mentality. Such ones can be convinced.
For example GOG is successful in negotiating with various gaming publishers about releasing even recent games DRM-free. Negotiating with crooks who use DRM for side reasons can't be productive, but negotiating with those who use DRM out of habit or notion that "it's a standard in the industry" is possible. According to GOG, they had many meetings with representatives from various companies and they asked for graphs, charts and other information about how GOG operate and how successful is their DRM-free approach. Sometimes that results in DRM-free releases. And the more they do it, the easier is for them to demonstrate that.
Unfortunately video industry lacks any serious distributor who would want to do such kind of work. Netflix and Co. are too comfortable obliging the DRM insanity.
Here it's expressed in more straighforward terms: http://fixthedmca.org
(It's not about DRM itself though, but about its derivatives).
There are two areas where the public awareness can be increased. First to push against crooked anticircumvention laws like DMCA 1201, and the second to actually vote with one's wallet by supporting DRM-free distributors and publishers and boycotting those who proliferate DRM.
Exactly my thought. I'll share this article with the majority of the people I know, but there's no way they'll read through the lengthy jargon presented.
It's very unfortunate, because I would love to spread the message.
For those looking for DRM free ebooks--O'Reilly has a sale today. Save 50% on all 8000+ Ebooks & Videos Use Code: DRM2014 http://oreil.ly/DRM-FREE-2014
I've been noticing this kind of disclosure becoming more commonplace, and it's beginning to bother me. No criticism at all of you: I'm sure you're trying to be ethical and ensure that there is no possibility that anyone might accuse you of a conflict of interest. I just wonder what purpose this serves. You offer a true, interesting, timely, and relevant bit of information. The fact that you work there doesn't change the nature of the information at all. Even if you got a commission on each book sold, which is unlikely, it still wouldn't change anything. O'Reilly's a great shop and this is great to know, in any case. So why this "disclosure"?
There are a lot of people who actually get paid to trawl internet forums and say good things about a company or divert people to that company's products.[1]
Declaring your affiliation is mainly a gesture of good faith, since it shows you've nothing insidious planned. In longer, discussion-type posts, it's an invitation for the reader to consider any biases the writer's affiliations cause them to have.
"Disclosure" type statements have always been common in specialized communities where decisions involving time and money are discussed. You see them all over the place in forums for luxury goods consumers (fountain pen enthusiasts, audiophiles, coffee geeks) and investors. When people start discussing the exchange of money or time for a specialized good (be it discount ebooks or paraglider motors), disclosures start to come into play.
Obviously, most of us here use IRC with OTR or SILC
But I agree with jfasi. You have a better chance making a drama video playing with pathos (maybe have a pet or child be affected by the issue of breaking DRM), than this discussion barely anyone saw. Maybe they should have announced this earlier?
I'm terribly sorry for off-topic, but it really interests me. I've never seen OTR on IRC or XMPP except for private (one-to-one) conversations. Could you go into some details, please?
As far as I know, OTR only works with two parties talking in private. Is there a mature, cryptographer-vetted multiparty OTR protocol with ready-to-use desktop software implementations out there?
The properties that interest me are secure authentication, acceptable forward secrecy and deniable encryption. I.e. I want to be sure I'm chatting with my friends, and if they don't keep logs what was said would stay only between us and the only thing external observer could say is that we had exchanged some information.
I want to buy a DRM-free ebook reader. I will read mostly epub, but support for HTML and TXT would be nice. Extra points if it supports archives. Any suggestions?
You could buy one of the really ugly Chinese e-ink readers, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Kobo makes several very nice ereaders which support EPUB, MOBI, HTML, TXT, even CBR/CBZ out of the box. They technically support DRM through the books sold in their marketplace, but you never have to use that.
I've been a long-time e-reader user. Started with my tiny HP Jornada in 2002 (Pocket PC anyone?) and I've been through many phones, tablets and e-ink readers.
Obviously it all depends on personal reading preferences but my favorite reading devices are the backlit e-ink/e-paper devices.
- Tablets are heavy. You should be able to hold a reading device with one hand for a long time without an uncomfortable weight.
- Tablets are battery hungry (even though this is usually not a big problem for me).
- There's less distraction with a "reading-only" device.
I understand that you don't want to support Amazon (which rules out Kindle Paperwhite) or B&N (which rules out Nook GlowLight). In the past I used Sony PRS devices and I was very happy with them but I've never used the new ones such as the backlit PRS 700. Maybe something like PocketBook?
That already supports a product which proliferates DRM (Kindle). So it's not the best approach if you want to support the DRM-free cause. Plus you can't really purge Kindle of DRM in the system unless you wipe out the whole OS and install something alternative.
That's in theory. In practice Amazon either subsidizes or doesn't have much of a mark up on the price of the Kindles; and hopes to make it up by selling DRM products.
May be. Then it's just symbolic. I.e. buying the product shows support for it in the eyes of Amazon (even if they don't profit from physical devices they benefit from popularity). Not buying it should imply that you want to discourage their insulting and unethical attitude of treating users as criminals by default.
That's a necessary prerequisite of course, but I doubt it will cause them to stop if it doesn't scale. I.e. individuals voting with their wallets have small amount of influence. Unless you have millions of people supporting that cause, publishers who are sick with DRM won't even blink.
However, distributors who are in between end users and publishers have more influence. They voting with their wallets (by refusing to sell anything from publishers which require DRM) has way more significant impact on the publishers. That's why services like GOG are really positive game changers, while others like Netflix are making things only worse by obliging DRM sick publishers.
Amen. I harassed ebooks.com support to obtain a way to filter only DRM-free ebooks. I've bought some John Scalzi books (no DRM as per the author request, on ebooks.com; however complete, shameless disregard of the author will from b&n, amazon, etc).
Of course my main hope is that if enough people demand DRM-free ebooks, they'll give up. So the first thing is to absolutely boycott DRM-laden books. Therefore I won't post the search URL here, ask the support for it, be noisy and state you're actively boycotting DRM :)
