The idea
As a repeal: Remove the restrictions on circumventing electronic locks on content. Remove any restrictions on modifying equipment or tinkering.
Why is it important?
Digital Restrictions Management has not worked.
We can copyt DVDs quite easily. It may be illegal, but the software is out there. If a criminal wants to copy the data they will. All it takes is one lapse and the cat is out of the bag.
The fact that the record industry has started to realise this and offer DRM free content shows this.
Digital Restrictions Management is abused.
In what sense does "protecting copyright" include
- Preventing you buying a DVD in one country and watching it in another?
- Forcing you to watch adverts before watching the DVD?
- Restricting your ability to content shift or time shift material?
- Keeping works in the public domain, such as "Alice in Wonderland", protected?
- Preventing works ever entering the public domain?
- Controlling which products can be use to access the works?
Record industry executives have argued that copyright gives them the right to control not only sharing but how you read it. The argument sounded like a book author arguing that they had the right to specify a daylight blue reading lamp, in other words rediculous. That DRM systems may give them the ability to do this is no excuse for them trying.
Digital Restrictions Management makes archiving hard.
If content is locked up then future generations will likely have difficulty accessing it.
Giving too much to the "Content Industry" harms other industries.
DRM restricts the equipment that can be made to access content. Only manufacturers authorised by the content industry may participate and they face restrictions on what their equipment can do. Useful ideas that could benefit the customer, sell well and support the manufacturing industry have had to be shelved because the content industry did not approve.
Before DRM it was possible for anyone to make equipment that processed electronic content, be it tapes, CDs, records, VHS video. A wealth of interesting devices could be made allowing customers all sorts of freedom. DRM closes down that chance for innovation and the benefits it brings.