On DRM
Our government is corrupt. Yes, I know you’ve heard it before, but let me finish. We both know it, you and I, but we think of it as something that can’t be changed, something we have to put up with and deal with and live with. We just have to bow our heads a little and give up. I don’t know about you, but that concept grates on me. Why should I have to give up my beliefs every time I ram up against the impossible, incomprehensible, insurmountable wall that is law and government? Why should you?
So what has brought on the rant this time, you no doubt wonder? DRM—Digital Rights Management. You’ve no doubt run up against it time and time again, especially since you’re reading this on a computer. You have CDs, you have DVDs, and if you’re extremely cool and with it like me, you have an e-reader. Kudos to you for that. It really is the way to go. But let me tell you a story.
When I was little, my friend Nathan and I shared music. We weren’t some sort of weird cyber pirate gang (ARG!), but we were just sharing music, like friends do. He ripped his CDs for me and I ripped mine for him. Under current mode of thought, this is pretty damn close to illegal, if not illegal outright. You know what I realized, though? Every CD that was ripped for me by my friend, I bought a copy of later. More than that. Because we were friends, we had the same taste in music. I liked every CD that he gave me and I bought other CDs by the artists he had ripped for me the second they came out.
So nowadays we’re more high tech. We have filesharing that we have to deal with. Let me put this hypothetically. Say a random person downloaded a CD off the internet. They heard of an artist and wanted to try them out, see what all the fuss and bother was about. They downloaded the CD and listened to it and they really liked it. Go hypothetical person! He or she found a new band! That’s awesome! So the next CD that the artist comes out with, are they going to buy it? There probably aren’t any statistics about this kind of thing, but if I was this hypothetical person, I would say, “hell yes!” And if I found a cheap enough copy of the first CD, I would probably buy that too to support this artist that I loved and to get the artwork and pretty CD. What if the hypothetical person had hated the CD they downloaded? Well, let’s put it this way. Standard CD price is $15-19. What sucker is going to buy any CD for $15-19 if they aren’t sure if they even like it and might never have heard the artist before? Random impulse aside, no one’s giving up nearly twenty bucks if they don't have a good idea about what they want, so the record labels can't be losing that much money. And honestly, I don’t know of anyone who just downloads entire CDs of their favorite artists instead of buying those CDs. One CD to see if they like it, maybe, but after that? Not likely.
But hey, maybe I'm wrong. To be honest, I don’t want to argue for filesharing on a massive level. That’s not my point here. I believe that you should be able to share your music with friends willy-nilly, though, because once I own a CD, it’s mine and you better damn well not get in my way in trying to get maximum enjoyment out of it. If I want to rip my music and make however many copies I want to so that the original doesn’t get scratched, I will. And I’ll find a way around the rules that the music industry, the book industry, and the game industry make if I have to, because I have a right to use what I paid for. I don’t know that I have the right to make it available to people who I don’t know personally—meaning in person or those whom I have some sort of relationship with on the internet—but I believe that’s a problem that they need to find another way to deal with. They’re hurting the people that are actually paying for their products. I have one CD that my computer won’t even recognize due to the DRM. I don’t listen to that CD very much. I wonder why?
To give you another example, I bought an ebook from Barnes & Noble recently. It wouldn’t play on my e-reader, so I stripped the DRM off of it so that I could even read it. I’m not planning on giving this book to anyone. I’m planning on reading it myself, and maybe if I like it, recommend it to a friend. I stripped the DRM just so I could read the thing. I’m going to be honest and tell you that’s illegal. It’s called anti-circumvention, and it means that even if I’m not allowed access to my own technology, it’s for my own good and if I break it, I’m a criminal. Let me put it plainly: I am a criminal for enabling myself to read a book. I am a criminal for reading a book. Jeez, what’s next? Kindle burning?
Distributing a book to other people across the entirety of the interwebz with the DRM cracked? That’s illegal. I can get behind that. Cracking the DRM for my own use? In my opinion, it’s illegal for that to be illegal, and it’s something I’m willing to go to jail over. And though I haven’t ever been to jail, I don’t think that it’s a lie for me to say that. I’m young, smart, female, and hey, I’ve got no place better to be at the moment—I’d make a pretty good martyr for the cause, wouldn’t you say? Cracking the DRM on one book is pretty small stuff, though, so as long as I don’t become a Mafioso that they can put away on a technicality like that, I think I’m safe.
So, why is our government corrupt, you might say to me? This sounds like more evil corporation business, which we all know about already! And who passes the laws that allows these evil corporations to work, I ask you? Lobbying is evil, which we hopefully already know. Lobbying is what makes DRM legal. But I don’t think it should be. It keeps you from basic enjoyment of something you’ve already bought, something you own. I don’t necessarily approve of the United States government, regardless of the political party of who’s in charge, but what exactly happened to my right of private property? Why are some ebooks made so that I’m essentially licensed to access the book rather than so that I own the book? Isn’t property supposed to be a natural right in the US?
I don’t know how to change a law, but I believe that DRM is wrong. I hope that you do too. Moreover, I hope that you care that it’s wrong. Because getting people to care is the hardest part of any battle. Because nowadays, people don’t care about much at all. Because people don’t fight anymore, not for what they believe in. Maybe we’ve forgotten how. But spreading revolutionary literature is the first step! So who’s with me?