The International Day Against DRM (IDAD) is today -- here's what you can do to help

Submitted by Greg Farough on December 4, 2020 - 9:35am

There's no time like the present to stand up against Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). Fittingly, today is the Defective by Design campaign's annual International Day Against DRM (IDAD)!

As months of quarantine have only tightened the stranglehold DRM has on how so many people experience culture, we have a lot of work ahead of us. If each person reading this takes a small step to show their support for the movement, we can have a meaningful and lasting effect.

  • Join us in sending a clear message about Netflix's use of DRM by phoning their feedback and support line at 1-865-383-3330. Need help on what to say? You can follow our sample call script on this year's IDAD page. If you're not a Netflix subscriber, you can tell them that you never will be one until they get rid of their DRM.

  • Join us for a BigBlueButton session from 12 PM to 4 PM EST (17:00 UTC) for an informal chat on the anti-DRM movement, where we'll talk strategies, share stories, report on activities happening around the globe, and plan for the future.

  • Post on social media using the hashtag #DayAgainstDRM to let us and others know how you're celebrating the Day Against DRM. If you're on social media, keep an eye out, and share, our own posts and those of organizations around the world who are partnering with us, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Framasoft, and La Quadrature du Net.

  • You don't have to be in the United States to participate: help us update important information about your country so we can direct people around the world to updated resources. Let the DBD campaign know what DRM-related issues need attention in your area and how we can help on the LibrePlanet wiki.

  • Join us on the Freenode IRC network in the #dbd channel for real-time discussion on anti-DRM activism.

  • Challenge yourself to go a day (or even longer!) without DRM, and call on your community to join you. You can use our Guide to DRM-free Living as a way to read, watch, and listen to new media without compromising your freedom. While you're there, you can check out DRM-free media sales from Libreture, Leanpub, and other partnering organizations of this year's IDAD.

  • Support our comments for new exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) anti-circumvention rules by sending your name and state (or country, if you are outside the US) to licensing@fsf.org.

Of course, the fight against DRM rages on, and if we want to make progress, our activism against it can't be limited to just one day out. We hope you'll choose to get more involved with the Defective by Design campaign by joining our discussion mailing list, participating on IRC with other members of the DRM Elimination Crew, or by planning your own local or digital actions against DRM.

Just as DRM didn't become this powerful overnight, it won't be defeated without a sustained, concerted effort from all of us. But if there's anything we have learned in the past fourteen years of the campaign, it's that much can be accomplished by a committed group of activists. We hope you'll not only join us for this year's IDAD, but become someone the movement can rely on for support. The fight for user freedom needs us and you, and together, I know that we can succeed.

Illustration Copyright © 2020 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.