8 Ways to Sunday

Discovered on Uninnovate, this video takes less than sixty seconds to cover some of the biggest problems with digital rights management (DRM) technology:

If you’re unfamiliar with DRM, it’s basically a kind of computer program that’s embedded in the media you purchase — store-bought DVDs, iTunes downloads, etc. — that keeps you from using your computer to create copies of that media or even keeps you from playing it on certain devices. The idea is to prevent Internet piracy, but the problem comes when DRM keeps law-abiding consumers from doing perfectly legal things with their movies and music. Unfortunately, that problem crops up pretty frequently.

The video seems to be the work of “Defective by Design,” a Free Software Foundation campaign against DRM. If you’d like to learn more about how DRM violates your rights, and what you can do about it, here are a few places to start:

• Here’s another video: ZDNet Executive Editor David Berlind gives a more detailed explanation of how DRM screws you over, and suggests the technology be renamed Content Restriction Annulment and Protection (CRAP).
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an excellent mini-site devoted to explaining the issues surrounding DRM.
• The Defective by Design website has a list of places where you can buy DRM-free media.
• Wikipedia’s article on fair use rights will help you understand what you’re losing by buying DRMed media. You can also get more background on the controversy over DRM in this article.
• The Digital Freedom website has some info about how DRM hurts artists and others, as well as consumers.

Updates

• 11/05/2006 @ 11:30 PM — Added a brief explanation of what DRM does for those who aren’t familiar with the technology.