Defective by Design

I love the poetics of the name. Less obscure to the general public and so much cooler than garden variety "anti-DRM" campaigns. "Defective by design [1] " refers to Digital Rights Management (DRM) protections that limit and restrict even fair use of electronic gadgetry like DVD and MP3 players.

This campaign is organized by the Free Culture Foundation and has over 15,000 registered members. Even Newsweek [2] recently reported on the effectiveness of this campaign at attacking DRM and effectively educating people on the unfair monopoly privileges of these intellectual property rights.

DRM is U.S. legislation that tried to make its way into Canada through Bill C-60 [3], but failed, due in part to strong domestic resistance. The U.S. has a more expanded copyright system than Canada, since we have more "user" protections, whereas in the U.S. there are no exceptions at all. In Canada, we have a different bundle of rights, such as "fair use" of copyrighted material for educational purposes and personal use. We also have anti-circumnavigation protections - so whereas in the U.S. if you modify any software you buy or try to bypass encryptions, you could be found guilty for violating patent or copyright protection, in Canada, so long as you can prove you had no intention to infringe, you're doing okay. At least for now.

David Berlind, Executive Director of tech trade journal ZDNet, coined his own acronym for DRM: "Content restriction, Annulment and Protection."

Digital rights regimes are increasingly being called into question as a viable business model, let alone as a fair use of power. Music service providers are apparently taking a whooping by iTunes; the only service provider that appears capable of withstanding the assault is eMusic, which has no DRM. No DRM means that when customers pay for and download songs, they can upload the music they purchased onto any number of MP3 players as many times as they like.

Other service providers, such as Itunes, use DRM to restrict their customers from doing what they want with the songs they ostensibly own. This includes prohibiting people from burning this music onto CDs. So, interestingly, while opposition to DRM has traditionally been copy-lefists, now executives are realizing that DRM is killing sales so it's time to kill DRM.

Nervous execs who initially embraced the technology are claiming that DRM was never meant to be a "silver bullet" and are trying to creep away from the mess they have made of their financial statements. But this victory illistrates an old fashioned model for how proprietary technology owners can be sunk by attacking their weakest link: bad customer service. As in, if you're going to make a bundle of money off your customers, don't make the deal even lousier by depriving them of what they have rightfully purchased.

Other DRM campaigns: