Today we stand up for digital rights, and that means we stand against DRM

Digital Restrictions Management. DRM. the software that comes bolted to your digital media and computerized devices and tries to police your behavior. The major media companies are its masters, and they justify it as a necessary evil to prevent filesharing, calling it Digital Rights Management. But it does more than that, and worse than that. Giving its owners power over our cars, medical devices, phones, computers, and more, it opens a deep crack in our digital rights and freedoms. That crack will only get wider and more dangerous as our societies continue to interweave with technology.

Governments and corporations steer the massive technosocial system that perpetuates DRM and makes it profitable, often opposing the interests of the technology's actual users. Committed to a more just and equal technological future, our movement pushes back.

In addition to our ongoing efforts, we're launching a new campaign today. Its goal is to make Netflix begin releasing its Web traffic from unnecessary and user-hostile DRM. Netflix accounts for more than half of peak traffic in some countries -- we have to do this if we are going to move past DRM as a society.

Today, is the International Day Against DRM, and like-minded people around the world are standing up for their digital rights. Will you join them?

Take action now on DayAgainstDRM.org.

One last thing -- Defective by Design is powered by individual donations from people like you. If you can, please pitch in to support us so that our year-round work and next year's Day can be even better.