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freedom bits

Some bits about my work and life as president of Free Software Foundation Europe.

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Lifting the veil on DRM in different ways

greve

Tuesday 10 October 2006

about: Articles , DRM

[ The following article was first posted on DRM.info. It is copied here for the convenience of readers of the Fellowship. ]

In the entire discussion on Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) there are multiple problems that prevent broader discussion and understanding. One of them is that when talking about "Digital Restrictions Management" (DRM) the eyes of many people simply glaze over, as it is quite a mouthful and sounds technical, a certain attention killer.

The same is true when using the labels that proponents of the technology would like to see people using, "Digital Rights Management" or "Technological Protection Measures" in particular. The names alone seem to erect a barrier for people to understand how this technology affects their lives in very real ways.

Trying to attract public attention by turning yourself in to the police, as a group of French DRM activists have done, is a good idea. The German consumers organisation vzbv has taken this to a different level by opening a virtual jail for people who admit to have made private copies -- a right under German law, but one that is increasingly made illegal by DRM.

But none of this undoes the necessity to explain to "normal" people what DRM is and how it affects all our lives.

For this, I've drafted "If paperback books came with DRM... a short story", which takes an object that people know (a paperback book) and describes how it would behave if it came with DRM.

The goal was to describe commonly found DRM effects and put them all into the book, followed by real-world examples of DRM systems that have such effects. If you have ideas how to improve the story, if you know other examples, or if you have general feedback, please let me know at greve--at--fsfeurope.org.

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Back from Day against DRM Protest in Zürich

greve

Tuesday 03 October 2006

about: DRM , Fellowship , FSF , Switzerland

An exciting day is coming to an end now. You can read a short account of our Day against DRM protest in downtown Zürich on my other blog on DRM.info, so I won't repeat the same story here, but I will include the link to some very nice pictures.

The FSFE Zürich Crew was very happy with all the people who turned up, there were people from literally all over Switzerland who had sometimes travelled for more than 2 hours on the train to join the protest. Talk about motivation and dedication. Thank all of you so very much!

But unlike the others who could head to lunch directly, we had another task ahead of us: We needed to officially take into possession the new offices of the Free Software Foundation Europe in Zürich. And what could be better suited to this task than hoisting the flag of the Fellowship?