Just two weeks ago, the Free Software Foundation's Defective by Design group organised demonstrations protesting about Apple's use of DRM on its iTunes music store, which took place outside of 8 Apple stores across the US on June 10th. Now the Defective by Design group has planned a day of action to take place on June 23rd against the main culprits constantly pushing DRM. On that date, they urge supporters to call the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and other similar organisations around the world to complain about DRM. At this time, the group has reached 3,000 registered supporters.
The Defective by Design manager has also made it clear that while the RIAA is the main one pushing the DRM technology, many content providers can potentially be blamed also as while they may say that the RIAA requires them to use DRM, they may have other reasons behind why they happily get along with DRM. Apple's refusal to open its players DRM to competitors is a clear example. One of the main purposes behind this campaign is also get the RIAA to hear directly from the public who are affected by it.
The main problem at the moment is that while the RIAA helps push DRM, they are protected from the public by the content providers in-between such as software using DRM, music providers like iTunes and so on, which means that besides their lawsuits, they generally do not deal with the public directly. The group plans on publishing contact information for the RIAA and other organisations this Friday, 23rd June and asks its supporters to share their experience with contacting these organisations. Thanks to eltranquil, Wesociety and RTV71 for letting us know about the following news:
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The full article can be read here. |
Despite restrictive DRM becoming more widespread with most major music download services including iTunes and recent CD album titles making use of it, the vast majority of consumers are not aware of the problem DRM is causing, so this is where the Defective by Design group aims comes in. In theory, DRM is suppose to protect music and other content from piracy, but in reality it also limits what equipment consumers may listen to their music on and what they can do with the music. For example, Digital Rights Management (DRM) is the main reason why iTunes music will only play on an iPod and also why an iPod will not play music from most competing music download stores or from copy protected CDs.
As the RIAA is unlikely prepared to take on a large number of calls from the public, there is a good chance that the vast majority of calls will either be put on a lengthy hold or put through to an answering service. However, unless the group succeeds in getting public news coverage of this event (such as on a major TV channel), chances are that it will be little more effective than the protests they carried out outside the Apple stores.
Feel free to discuss about this campaign on our forum in this thread.
Source: News Forge
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