Everybody here is talking about there rights to handle content that is taking away, or about the
right of companies to protect there rights over content. I think the problem with DRM is that the
technology decides about the rights, and that's the reason why DRM should be illegal.
I'm living in a democratic country, where an elected government decides what right I have as
a consumer en what rights a company has over it's content. DRM technology is taking
away my democratic right to vote for changes, to punish party's for, what I consider, bad
decisions. Company's that are using DRM are putting themselves above the law, these
company's become dictators.
When they think I'm doing something wrong they have to go to a judge in my country, and he
will decide if what I did was wrong or not. DRM technology makes company's there own judge,
that's another democratic right this technology is taking away from me.
I think that most people will agree that protecting democratic rights is much more important
than protecting copyrights. Mike I hope you will change your mind about open DRM.
I hope the Free Software Foundation Europe will never get involved in anti-democratic projects.

>> ... You buy a cd and when you return home you discover that you cannot reproduced it. ..."
> This is a problem of communication that this work is protected, like copycontrol.

This is more than a communication, issue, it is technical invalidation of a legally granted right, called "Privatkopie" in Germany.

>>"...You can't make a copy in case the original is damaged, or one copy to keep in your car and one in your hi-fi. ..."
> And this is not allowed, one reason for DRM, sorry.

Which legal restriction are you referring to, and in which country?

Because even the most extreme systems that I am aware of off the top of my head allow backup copies and making copies for the car -- as long as you only play one of them at the same time.

>> "...Another example are DVDs that you cannot play around the world because of regional restrictions. ..."
> This is one way to protect the rights of the holder, and you know that before you buy, or you are in a bad shop ;-).

DVD region coding violates the first-sale doctrine of copyright, and is ultimately an extortionist scheme that has nothing to do with protection of rights. Copyright is a distribution monopoly, and when people buy a DVD, that transaction provides the remuneration.

Instead, DVD region coding invalidates rights of customers, including making backups of something they purchased legally.

I very much recommend reading Cory Doctorow's talk at Microsoft, online at http://www.craphound.com/msftdrm.txt:

"Here's a true story about a user I know who was stopped by DRM.
She's smart, college educated, and knows nothing about
electronics. She has three kids. She has a DVD in the living room
and an old VHS deck in the kids' playroom. One day, she brought
home the Toy Story DVD for the kids. That's a substantial
investment, and given the generally jam-smeared character of
everything the kids get their paws on, she decided to tape the
DVD off to VHS and give that to the kids -- that way she could
make a fresh VHS copy when the first one went south. She cabled
her DVD into her VHS and pressed play on the DVD and record on
the VCR and waited.

Before I go farther, I want us all to stop a moment and marvel at
this. Here is someone who is practically technophobic, but who
was able to construct a mental model of sufficient accuracy that
she figured out that she could connect her cables in the right
order and dub her digital disc off to analog tape. I imagine that
everyone in this room is the front-line tech support for someone
in her or his family: wouldn't it be great if all our non-geek
friends and relatives were this clever and imaginative?

I also want to point out that this is the proverbial honest user.
She's not making a copy for the next door neighbors. She's not
making a copy and selling it on a blanket on Canal Street. She's
not ripping it to her hard-drive, DivX encoding it and putting it
in her Kazaa sharepoint. She's doing something *honest* -- moving
it from one format to another. She's home taping.

Except she fails. There's a DRM system called Macrovision
embedded -- by law -- in every VHS that messes with the vertical
blanking interval in the signal and causes any tape made in this
fashion to fail. Macrovision can be defeated for about $10 with a
gadget readily available on eBay. But our infringer doesn't know
that. She's "honest." Technically unsophisticated. Not stupid,
mind you -- just naive.

The Darknet paper addresses this possibility: it even predicts
what this person will do in the long run: she'll find out about
Kazaa and the next time she wants to get a movie for the kids,
she'll download it from the net and burn it for them."

DVD region coding doesn't help anyone.

Neither does DRM in general: It is the attempt to force an outdated business model on society, instead of adapting to the changes. The driving forces of that attempt are technology companies who make false promises about the feasibility of the technology -- including obvious nonsense about "Open DRM" -- and make a lot of money in the attempt of establishing them.

This may be good for those technology companies, but causes incredible harm to society, including authors and artists.

I very much recommend to take a look at http://DRM.info to check out where these things are headed:
consumer interest groups, libraries, creative groups and digital freedom advocates are united in their criticism about the dangers of Digital Restrictions Management. And so should you.

It's irrelevant whether DRM is implemented in Free Software or not.
IF DRM is implemented, you lose your rights. That's it.
Please have a look at http://drm.info, where infos about who wants and who controls DRM are given.

Sorry the system does not allow me to write more, stupid ??? :-))

"...Worse still, DVDs can also be used to impose restrictions on your computer and also have the potential to insert secret code...."

This is a clear infringement of the maker of the DVD.

Sorry, i think DRM is not a bad thing, in most cases, its only a tecnology to protect the rights, you can do this also!. We should discuss how we can involved in this process to support this tecnology on free systems (open DRM for example). To ignore this is not a good way.

"... You buy a cd and when you return home you discover that you cannot reproduced it. ..."

This is a problem of communication that this work is protected, like copycontrol.

"...You can't make a copy in case the original is damaged, or one copy to keep in your car and one in your hi-fi. ..."

And this is not allowed, one reason for DRM, sorry. You can also protect your work, but we live here in a free (better) world and give anybody the rights to do what they want (Software GPL for example).

"...Another example are DVDs that you cannot play around the world because of regional restrictions. ..."

This is one way to protect the rights of the holder, and you know that before you buy, or you are in a bad shop ;-).