Happy Day Against DRM!

Today, May 4, is the International Day Against DRM, the day in which the Free Software Foundation's "Defective By Design" campaign urges you to celebrate DRM-free media and boycott DRM. There are plenty of local events, poster templates, and the DefectiveByDesign page has a lot of suggestions for other ways to participate:

Pledge to take action on May 4th

Put up a banner or widget for Day Against DRM (or make your own!)

Share a link to this page on your social networks

Start your own event for May 4th

Read a long article by Katherine Noyes over at PCWorld, entitled It's Time to Give Digital [Restrictions] Management the Boot.

Here's a nice lagniappe: all of O'Reilly's ebooks are 50% off with the code DRMFREE today.

International Day Against DRM — May 4, 2012

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Business • carousel • Copyfight • drm • ebooks • happy mutants • protest

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Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

niktemadur

Surely everyone here finds it obscene when your child wants to see “Toy Story” or “Cars” or whatever, and is subjected to a barrage of promos THEN the obligatory FBI warnings. As a parent, you press “>>”, something like TWENTY times.

Please “Punch me in the face and call me Nancy” (Father John Misty) with this one: When I screened films at a cultural center back in 2005 to 2007, I bought an Oppo for the task. Then I never picked it up, and “nobody knows” where it is now. But it’s not like “they” know the value of an Oppo, so yeah, I believe it. But I lost a damned Oppo DVD player!

What, do I think top of the line, supremely hackable DVD players grow on trees? Stupid, stupid, stupid…

But hey, no matter what, I’m not buying any Sony anymore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS84BMFszW0
- http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers
  
  Usually pressing stop twice allows the film to be resumed without all the unskippable junk.
  - niktemadur
    
    Not on my old Sony DVD player, bought before I vowed to never buy their products again.
- xian
  
  I hear you… This is precisely the reason I have an Apple TV. All our kids movies have been ripped and stripped of all the trailers, ads, warnings, menus, etc.
helleman

New favorite word - lagniappe. BoingBoing – my word expanding blog. Thanks Cory!
- niktemadur
  
  An approximate in Spanish: obsequio. I’ve always loved that word.
  
  But back to French, the smell of fresh rain on dry soil: petrichor.
suburbanhick

If that illustration isn’t by Gerald Scarfe, someone’s got some splainin’ to do….
- http://m413.com/ m413
  
  Scarfe? Oh that guy who has the exact same style as hunter s thompson’s illustrator steadman. While I am honored to be put in the ring with Scarfe, my work and style is different in many ways as is my message. I don’t mind explaining myself to a guy who steals from Ricky Ricardo.
  - suburbanhick
    
    You’re right, and I stand corrected. I did mean that your work looks like Steadman. Scarfe was another artist I thought of whose work instantly makes me think of Steadman.
    
    I checked out your portfolio, which is why I was so surprised the illustration used in the article looks so much like a lift from Steadman. You clearly have your own well-developed style, which you use to good effect; why such an obvious lift? The ink spatters and ink-nib scratches? Sorry – that just screams “Steadman!!” to me.
  - http://m413.com/ m413
    
    In all my work a certain amount if splattering and gestural line work is used to some degree. Some work employe more use of these devices them others. The DRM piece had dome splattering and gestural line work but I do not feel it use was used as gratuitously as a steadman piece. I see where you draw your comparison from but I feel steadman style and mine are not as closely connected as you see them. We both employ similar techniques but for different desired affect.
    
    At the end if the day I am glad I got the chance to talk about my work. I hope you can find the time to check out my political comics Monday – Friday.
http://weirdly.net Jacob Ewing

The link to ”a banner or widget for Day Against DRM” is giving a 404 error. I’m guessing that’s because it links locally to http://boingboing.net/dayagainstdrm/banners/ rather to http://www.defectivebydesign.org/dayagainstdrm/banners/

- nice 404 page BTW.
chgoliz

So that’s why the Keith Haring guys are dancing today on Google.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002166401936 Sam Gonzalez

I do find it ironic that on this Day against DRM, I lost my e-licenser Dongle to use my legitimate version of Cubase 6.5 in my music production studio, and was left with no option but to turn around and drive back home as the studio was unusable without it. Unfortunately e-licenser has no temporary internet verification for such an occasion which I can assure you is not rare.

In the music production industry there is rampant piracy of software, and plenty of dollars being made with cracked plugins so I understand the need to try and curtail this. But when over the top software protection actually stops me being able to do my job, it really does more harm than good.