EFF to ITU: DRM Is Dangerous for Developing Countries

EFF is pleased to announce that we have submitted a paper
to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the
UN agency that advises global leaders on telecommuncations
policy, as part of its survey of "Digital Rights Management"
(DRM) technologies (ITU-R Working Party 6M Report on
Content Protection Technologies). Our message: These
technologies have been a disaster in the developed world
and they are a disaster in the offing for the developing
world.

Cory Doctorow, EFF's European Affairs Coordinator and the
paper's principal author, explains, "This paper is part
of our ongoing effort to bring some sanity to the blind
march toward DRM technologies. These technologies don't
work for stopping copyright infringement - their
supposed function - yet they've served as an
anti-competitive cudgel, a set of shackles on the
public's rights in copyright, and a rubric for censoring
and even jailing security researchers. EFF is delighted
to be able to get this much-needed reality check before
policymakers worldwide as they consider the question:
'Which DRM is best for my country?' Our answer: 'DRM
will exact a punishing toll on your national interest
and yield no benefit at all.'"

The paper, called "Digital Rights Management: A Failure
in the Developed World, a Danger to the Developing World,"
explores the ways that DRM has harmed the developed
world, negatively impacting scientific research, speech,
innovation, competition, legitimate consumer interests,
access by disabled people, archiving and library functions,
and distance education. The paper goes on to examine the
risks to the developing world in terms of its potential
to curtail the public domain, to criminalize free and
open source software projects, to enable region-based
discrimination, and to lock local artists, authors, and
performers into the monopoly pricing of DRM vendors.

EFF would like to thank the Union for the Public Domain,
the Open Knowledge Forum, IP Justice, the Alternative
Law Forum, the World Blind Union, the European Digital
Rights Initiative, Electronic Frontier Finland, and the
Foundation for Internet Policy Research for their help
and endorsement of the paper. If your organization
focuses on these issues and would like to sign on, please
contact Cory Doctorow at cory@eff.org.

"Digital Rights Management: A Failure in the Developed
World, a Danger to the Developing World":
pdf file

This is great! I have to give a persaussive speech for my speech class in the coming week or 2 and of course I am going to do it on the RIAA / MPAA are economic terrorists.

This paper will give me even more fuel for my speech hopefully i will convince my fellow students to Boycott RIAA ! Especially since my school is Penn State and they decided to waste my tutition money on napster!

Speaking of this.. i'm seeking an HDTV solution for a g5, and am interested if anyone can point me in the right direction.

I've been doing research and have yet to get a clear straight answer as to weather or not i will be able to record HD cable/satellite, or even which cards i would be able to use.

Part of that confusion has to do with DRM regimes adopted on digital cable/satellite in the plug&play agreements, and i simply refuse to buy if i will have no means to either record unfettered out of the box.. or at least hack it (and if such hacking is required i need to know the hack exists, and exists for my system)

I am more than convinced that DRM regimes are slowing the adoption of HDTV by both threatening restrictions on recording and by making hardware more expensive.

After all, i'm an early adopter and now actually have substantial cash to burn, but refuse to buy until i'm sure i can make it work as i want it to work.

Darkened03 go for it man. Your generation is the one that's gonna make an impact on this.

I would advise people now not to buy standalone HDTV equipment, as it is likely to be made partly obsolete by the introduction of DRM systems - DRM equipment will not interoperate fully with non-DRM. Instead, I would suggest purchasing the equipment to allow PCs to record and display HDTV content. This is less likely to become obsolete, and easier to hack if it does.

We need more like you Darkened03! I salute ya!

goldenpi: i've been posting in forums and so far had no luck finding reliable HDTV advice..

Really annoying.. besides the very ugly drm aspect it seems entirely different hardware is needed to pick up over the air vs cable/satellite and nobody has yet to give me a straight answer.

It may be years before i get to incorporate such functionality, hacked or not, into what will likely be my powermac g6, considering the g5 will likely be obsolete before reliable guides come out.

PC monitors are already more than HDTV quality - you need only a reciever card to watch on those. This is a cheap option for some, the main disadvantage of PC-based reception being the small screen size compared to a dedicated HDTV-TV.

Yes, different hardware is needed. This is a purely technical matter. Over-the-air is typicly a UHF signal, while satalite has far higher frequencies. Different hardware is needed to demodulate these.


Over here in Europe, we also have the complication of Sky - our leading sat-TV provider. Rather than follow any existing standards, they designed their entire broadcast system from the bits up and patented everything so only they are able to manufacture recievers, and in this way ensure that no other company can make products such as DVRs or PC-reciever cards which could disrupt their business. But they are only for conventional TV - HDTV is not a big thing here. Thus the market is split between sky and non-sky equipment.