Virgin Megastore DRM protest
p2p news / p2pnet: It’ll be D-Day at 7:00pm outside the Virgin Megastore on East 14th Street and Broadway in New York City on October 25, 2005.
Or, rather, it’ll be DRM-Day because Free Culture believes it’s time to make the offline public aware of DRM (Digital Restriction Management) issues. Accordingly, supporters of the protest will be turning up at the Megastore to hand out leaflets.
“If you’ve purchased CDs from Sony BMG or EMI, you may have purchased a digital rights management product and your fair use rights to your CD are at risk,” says the handout. “Here’s what you can do:
- Return the CD and demand a DRM-free version
- To disable the DRM from working, try holding down the shift key in Windows when you insert your CD
- Circumvent the DRM protectiion using other instructions available on the Internet.
As the leaflet points out, the Dave Matthews and Switchback bands both have albums poisoned by DRM. But both groups are telling fans how to get around it.
Discs with DRM are indeed damaged goods and should be treated accordingly.
DRM is just another entertainment and software cartel scam to limit your ability to freely choose.
But it can’t, and doesn’t, work because anything which can be seen or heard can be copied by ones means another.
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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win
- Mohandas Gandhi
Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local political representatives. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance.
See:-
Free Culture – DRM Protest
October 23rd, 2005 at 4:08 pm
Attempting to circumvent the DRM protection actually sends out the message, “it’s normal and acceptable for big music to do this.”. The only way forward is to reject DRM/cartel product alltogether.
October 23rd, 2005 at 7:34 pm
Or did I hear that somewhere else before…
October 24th, 2005 at 1:34 am
Slowly, ever so slowly, the public is starting to get the idea. The word is going out, both through hearing about it in events like this, a few editorials, papered and published studies, and from the buying public its self as it discovers what it is buying. In an ever growing number people are saying this isn’t a product I want. If they don’t want it, you can’t give it away.
That’s not all either; there is a growing resentment to the way these cartels are doing business and attempting to force the public into their idea of what the market place should be. They are teaching a whole new generation to hate just what they stand for. Go to any college and ask about this in relationship to the internet and its affects upon the students. You won’t have to ask very many of them before you learn of it. Those are what the cartels expect to be their prospective customers and they will have to face them in the near future.
The cartels are threatened by the very thing they fear the most, loss of control. They are being pinched by lack of:
~need for them to preform what they did in the past.
~repurchase from customers.
~developed artists with long term life that brings in the bucks in the tight times.
~the increased resentment they have generated for their industy and product through manipulation.
~overpriced product that is no longer worth the money.
I haven’t wanted to buy anything from these pratictioners of financial terrorism in a long time. I am quite sure I am not the only one that is on boycott over these abuses.
October 24th, 2005 at 5:30 am
It’ll be fun to start one in my city… It won’t really hurt the store with one day of protest (the intention is NOT to hurt the business store — i.e. small business owners, but to bring home the message to the execs…).
DRM == Damaged Readable Media
October 25th, 2005 at 2:24 am
Wow i dunno how i missed this back in August but check this link out. There are others out there, but they’re all just quoting this one. I did some hunting around but haven’t been able to find out whether or not he was successful. It’d be such a laugh if he was ;o)
http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1235