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Comment by mkr-hn | Hacker News Reader

This press release sounds like a declaration of war on content creators. You won't kill DRM by tut-tutting it. You kill DRM by changing the minds of content creators who use it. You won't do that by waging a war on them.

What does one do to participate in this anyway? The press release wasn't clear.

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They link to http://www.defectivebydesign.org/ which seems to be main organising point.

Seems very misguided. It takes aim at DRM, not why DRM exists. People don't care about DRM. Think about how many people buy the products this site calls defective. But people do care that the people who create think they need DRM. A public awareness campaign focused on getting people to convince creators that DRM is bad would be more effective.

Large businesses including publishers rarely base their decisions on ethical principles — businesses are done for profit. It is the consumer's responsibility to punish them for unethical behaviour. So we should be responsible consumers, and we should not buy any DRM-infected content or software no matter how useful it is from a pragmatic standpoint. Every purchase is a vote.

You go over to O'Reilly and buy a DRM-free e-book. Now, the FSF likely won't suggest that because they don't like mentioning the existence of “non-free” documentation, but IMO one of the best ways to protest DRM is by saying, with our pocketbooks, that we want e-books and are willing to pay good money for them but find DRM unacceptable.

If Tor had gotten their DRM-free book thing in order by now, rather than waiting until July or so, I'd probably also be buying a Tor e-book today.

This is confusing the two meanings of free that FSF tries so hard to fight. RMS doesn't care about paying for documentation (the FSF supported itself for quite some time selling docs and tapes). They care about free sharability of software, and by extension information about software. And yes, from that perspective the non-redistributable stuff from O'Reilly isn't something the FSF is interested in supporting per se.

I tried not to confuse them, but don't seem to have done a good job.

You are correct, the non-redistributability of many O'Reilly books is what they would they would object to, not cost. And not all O'Reilly books are non-redistributable - they have a number of books under open licenses.

While I don't disagree with the point, we are actually not declaring war on content creators, but on content rights-holders. I'm just guessing, but I would suppose that the majority of cases in which DRM was applied to a product was done so by a middle-man, e.g., Sony Records, not Lady Gaga.

Showing more of my ignorance on the subject, does anyone know if the content-producers are even consulted on whether or not their copyrighted works get DRM or not?

"We launched your career, handle all the hard work, and give you the freedom to create. We need DRM to keep doing this."

The rights holders have a very compelling argument from the perspective of a creator. How do you convince someone DRM is bad when the person showering them in money and fame is telling them it's good?

By educating them.

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