The fight against DRM often pits us against some of the biggest companies and the most dominant ways of thinking in the technology business. What gives us the independence to speak out -- and the power to make your voice heard --is the support of our members. Now, we need your help to keep Defective by Design strong in 2013.
Defective by Design isn't a stand-alone organization; it's one of the longest-running and most-loved campaigns of the Free Software Foundation. The FSF kicked off Defective by Design with the famous hazmat suit action in 2006 at a Windows developer conference, and since then, it's come to be a big part of what we stand for.
Here are some of Defective by Design's and the FSF's accomplishments in 2012, made possible by our donors in 2011 and 2012:
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Starting this summer, the FSF began building a new team to bring powerful organizing experience to Defective by Design and our other campaigns. The team has already made a big splash; at a cost of a few hundred dollars, they brought positive international news attention to the cause during Microsoft's Windows 8 launch. Microsoft is projected to spend over a billion dollars to promote Windows 8, which of course promotes and supports DRM. While we will never have that kind of money to blow, our campaigns team has you standing behind it. With your support, we can continue to raise your voices against DRM above the marketing buzz.
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Defective by Design led the creation of the DRM-free logo, a Web site badge to make it easy for users to tell when a site's media are safe from DRM. A substantial number of well-known organizations have already adopted the logo, including O'Reilly Media, Girlebooks, Magnatune, and ccMixter.
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Defective by Design and the FSF made DRM-free products more accessible to new audiences through our 2012 Giving Guide, which offers a comparison of freedom-supporting and proprietary gift options. The Giving Guide makes giving freely an easy choice, even for people who are new to the idea of demanding DRM-free media. Defective by Design also released major improvements to the Guide to DRM-Free Living in 2012.
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This Fall, Defective by Design organized supporters to give the DRM-pushing Kindle a one-star rating and tag it "defectivebydesign." We also asked supporters to email Amazon's directors about why using DRM is unacceptable. This action and its announcement brought renewed energy to the campaign; traffic to the site spike to nearly 30 times normal. To date, over 14,600 products have been tagged by more than 5,500 contributors.
The Free Software Foundation receives the majority of its funding through individual memberships and donations. We raise a large portion of these gifts during our annual fundraiser. This year, we need to meet our goal of $350,000 to crank up the volume for Defective by Design and our other campaigns. That's .02% of what Microsoft is estimated to spend promoting Windows 8. And we didn't even bother to calculate the percentage of what the RIAA and MPAA will spend trying to keep their customers in digital handcuffs. With what amounts to a rounding error for these giants, we can build and strengthen the anti-DRM movement by increasing our capacity to serve you, our supporters. Can you pitch in $50, $25 or even $10 to keep us going?
Take a stand against DRM. Donate now.
Whether you can donate or not, thanks for reading and being part of this campaign. It wouldn't have kept going for seven years if people like you didn't pour their time and effort into it, and we appreciate that. If you'd like to support us without making a donation, please share this appeal with your social networks: http://u.fsf.org/supportdbd