FSF launches anti-DRM campaign outside WinHEC 2006

Under most circumstances, protests do nothing but annoy me. But when you have one regarding DRM and people wearing wild looking plastic suits, my mind quickly changes!

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) launched its anti-Digital Rights Management (DRM) campaign in Seattle this morning. When attendees of the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2006 arrived at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center to hear a keynote address by Bill Gates, a small group of FSF members and their local allies were waiting to greet them, dressed in yellow hazmat suits and handing out pamphlets explaining that Microsoft products are — in the words of the key slogan for the campaign — “defective by design” because of the DRM technologies included in them.

An hour after the event, NewsForge talked with Peter Brown, FSF executive director, and Henri Poole, an FSF board member who helped to organize the protest, about the next steps in the campaign.

According to Brown, today’s event is the first of a series of protests in coming months against DRM throughout the United States. “We’re going to be following this bit with Microsoft with other DRM distributors in an effort to put pressures on manufacturers and raising DRM as a consumer issue,” Brown says. “The message we’re sending is: These devices are being distributed purposely crippled. These devices could do far more than what they do, but they’ve been created at the behest of Hollywood and Big Media to be crippled. And as you network these devices in your home or in your pocket, you’re effectively creating a system for Big Media to monitor your actions — to basically put them in control of your home and your habits.”

Planned as a flash event, today’s protest was deliberately kept secret over the last few days. The Electronic Frontier Foundation alerted its members in Seattle, and information was posted yesterday to the Bellingham Linux Users’ Group mailing list, but the three dozen supporters who showed up at the corner of Pike and 7th in downtown Seattle at 8 a.m. had little idea exactly what form the protest would take until shortly before they ducked into an alley to change into the hazmat suits and marched around to the front of the convention center…. Source: NewsForge

[tags]anti-drm campaign,distributors,manufacturers[/tags]