Digital Restrictions Management. DRM. The software that comes bolted to your digital media and devices and tries to police your behavior. The major media companies are its masters, and they justify it as a necessary evil to prevent filesharing, calling it Digital Rights Management. But it does more than that, and worse than that. Giving its unaccountable owners power over our cars, medical devices, phones, computers, and more, it opens a deep crack in our digital rights and freedoms. That crack will only get wider and more dangerous as our societies continue to interweave with technology.
Today is the tenth anniversary International Day Against DRM, and we're celebrating a decade of resistance with a new timeline, to which you can add your own speculative entries. But we won't rest while we celebrate. Today, online and at events around the world, we're working to explain DRM to everyone who is affected by it, so that we can regain popular control of our media and technology together.
Read our intro to DRM and explore our work.
Share on social media with the hashtag #DayAgainstDRM.
Participate year round by joining the DRM Elimination Crew List.
Actions Against DRM
Make a Statement
- Take a selfie and sign the petition against the proposed universal DRM system for the Web.
- Envision a future victory against DRM with a speculative entry into our timeline.
- Add our graphics to your social media profile, Web site, or blog.
- Submit a DRM horror story to the Electronic Frontier Foundation to support their campaign for required labeling of products encumbered with DRM.
- Make a blog post, video or song telling the world why you won't buy any products that are locked down by DRM, and link to it from the LibrePlanet wiki.
- Share our DRM-Free Living Guide with your friends and family.
Community Actions
- Attend or organize an event in your area. See the current list of events, or announce your own, on the LibrePlanet wiki.
- Expose the problem of DRM to your community, in person or online. Make use of our DRM FAQ and anti-DRM flyers. Contact us at info@defectivebydesign.org to let us know about groups who might join forces with us to fight DRM.
- Join the conversation on the Defective by Design discussion list or the #dbd IRC channel on Freenode.
Support DRM-free Media
- Buy DRM-free media from these companies offering discounts for the Day Against DRM.
- LeanPub: Discounts from various authors on this unique publishing platform
- O'Reilly: 50% off for the Day
- No Starch Press: 50% off everything with the code RIGHT2READ
- The Pragmatic Bookshelf: 20% off most ebooks with the code DRM_Free_Day_2016
- Packt Publishing: all videos and ebooks for $10, in celebration of ten years of International Day Against DRM
Many more DRM-free media providers are linked to in the Guide to DRM-free Living.
- Listen to gratis DRM-free Internet radio on Libre.fm
- Are you affiliated with a business that sells DRM-free media? Get in touch at info@defectivebydesign.org for more information on how you can participate in the Day!
Community posts on DRM
- The [Web's] guardians are acting like it's already dead by Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing
- Yes, all DRM by Parker Higgins of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Join Creative Commons in supporting International Day Against DRM
- Why should musicians care about DRM? by Devin Ulibarri, a musician and music educator
- The worst thing about DRM is that, most of the time, everything seems to work by Kat Walsh, a lawyer with extensive background in the free culture movement
- A DRM-Locked E-Book Is Always a Downgrade from a Printed Book (video) by April, the French Free Software organization
- DRM: Disabling the Disabled by Storm Dragon and Kyle, two blind anti-DRM activists
- The chilling impact of Digital Restrictions Management in libraries by James Hutter, an anti-DRM tech librarian
- DRM on streaming services: The ultimate anti-feature by Benjamin Mako Hill, a social scientist, technologist, and activist
Read more community writings about DRM and the Day on the LibrePlanet wiki. It's editable by anyone, so please add any posts you find (or write!).