The Family Guide to Digital Freedom

Definition and examples

DRM is something that is already having a great impact on how you access and enjoy every form of information or entertainment which is distributed in digital format. Officially, the acronym stands for "Digital Rights Management", even if many people believe it indicates "Dementedly Ruined Music" or "Disgustingly Restricted Movements, Mirth and Movies".

Practically speaking, DRM is the set of technologies used to abuse copyright, that is to prevent people (or at least to greatly limit their options), from copying, modifying and reusing any digital material, even when they regularly purchased
it.

Perhaps the most common example of DRM is the "Region Code" on most retail DVD movies. DRM is why your DVD player or computer won't play a movie that you regularly purchased online or during a vacation abroad, even if it will never be sold in your home country. Absurd, isn't it? It is perfectly legal to purchase stuff abroad, not to mention that often it is cheaper and much easier, if you have a computer, than it used to be. For a caring parent it may also be an excellent way to have his or her children practice a foreign language or, in a family of immigrants, to keep alive the culture and memories of one's native country.

Here's another DRM absurdity. Affordable homes become smaller every few years, VHS tapes take much more space than DVDs and their quality degrades over time. Any parent whose kids play "Winnie the Pooh" every other evening knows that. In spite of this, thanks to DRM, that is the copy protection measures on many recent VHS movies, it is not possible to copy them on DVDs to save a lot of space and make your regularly purchased movies last as long as you need
them.

Strictly speaking, these and many other DRM measures could still be easily
circumvented. The only problem is that, in order to do it, you must either have software or hardware knowledge, or wait until a programmer breaks the DRM scheme and shares the solution with you. The real problem, however, is that in both cases people are forced to commit a crime, that is to modify in illegal ways their hardware or software, to remain able to use their tapes and DVDs.

Why the industry wants it

The entertainment industry is pushing very hard to make DRM ubiquitous for one simple reason: to make more money. Sure, DRM is first of all an attempt to reduce the number of illegal copies: too many people get almost all their movies and music from illegal copies just because it's easy, without giving anything back to those who actually created those works. Others make a business of making thousands of copies of a CD or DVD to sell them at much cheaper prices. In both cases there is an obvious monetary loss for the creators.

The second and more important reason to enforce DRM is that it's the only way to make format shifting impossible, in order to sell the same thing over and over and create many (artificially) different markets. DRM is the opposite to globalization, even if it is advocated by multinationals.

What is bad or useless in DRM

There is nothing wrong in copyright as a way to reward, for a limited time, the authors and performers of creative works while granting fair use. DRM could be good, or at least harmless, if it just ported these things and nothing more to digital works. Most of its current applications, instead, do more harm than good.

First of all, DRM as it is today is just useless against industrial scale
illegal copying. It has been said that "DRM doesn't stop online piracy any more than a speedbump in your driveway slows interstate traffic". The reason is that all digits are the same: there is no problem whatsoever to copy all the digits on a DVD (both those constituting the movie and the DRM ones that should "protect" it) on a million blank DVDs and sell them at a very low price. The only real solution to this fact of life is to make computers as we know them today disappear: this attempt is already taking place and is discussed in the next chapter.

In the second place, DRM goes right against fair use. The books you bought ten years ago can be moved to a new bookcase, re-bound or get a new cover. You must buy a new copy only if they are destroyed, not if you go on vacation or start wearing glasses. You can sell or lend them. You can buy them in the first place. These same rights must remain (both technically and legally) even with digital works.

It must therefore remain possible to purchase a copy of creative works: otherwise, a very tempting way to legally limit consumer rights would be to stop selling them (or the hardware needed to use them) and only offer leasing of books, music albums, computers, DVD players... In the second place, legally purchased songs, movies or books in digital format should remain useable with any electronic device you own and freely movable from one of them to another, without absurd procedures or fees to pay.

What we have today, instead, is that "as consumers, we can't decide anymore on what we'll watch. We watch whatever gets released where we live, at whatever prices they decide". So much for globalization.

Another big problem of DRM, another trap to avoid, is that it can seriously hurt not only end users but also many artists, as explained in more detail in another chapter of this book.

Last but not least, at the cultural level, DRM prevents preservation of
what people find important: under DRM, only what looks important to
corporations, because it can be sold times and again, is surely preserved and remains legally available.

How can you recognize and fight DRM?

It is very tempting and (still) very easy to just ignore this issue altogether and keep breaking, while it's still possible, DRM related techniques and laws. Doing so, however, gives the corporate interests which are pushing DRM the best weapon they could dream of, that is arguments to impose electronics devices which are impossible to use as you want: black, dumb boxes that your children could never use to learn a technical job, create their own music or movies or start a business without bending backwards to some corporation.

With just a bit of self discipline, the right way to fight DRM is very easy to practise; after all, we aren't talking of food or medicines here. Just ask, before buying CDs, DVDs or any other creative work in electronic format, these simple questions:

• Is this usable with any type of software, computer, cell phone, portable player...?
• Is it technically possible to do a perfect, non degraded backup copy without messing with the hardware in any way?
• Is it possible to move this song/movie/whatever to other discs or devices without any limits or loss of quality?

If the answer to any of the questions above is "no" or "I have no idea", think at least twice before buying: almost surely, you would get something that you will be forced to buy again in very few years, if you want to preserve it. Note that this remains true even if you buy at a lower price, or get for free, any illegally copied ("pirated") material.