Howard Rheingold just posted "At 8:30am this morning, wearing neon Hazmat gear, 25 techology activists from FSF & EFF swarmed the 2006 Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Seattle. Following the lead of the French anti-DRM activists, the new initative, Defective By Design, is signing up activists interested in getting involved in local actions to bring awareness to the crippling effects of DRM on art, literature, music or film, and free software. "
Slashdot writes "The Free Software Foundation launched a new anti-DRM initiative today with a flash protest at Bill Gates’s keynote speech to Microsoft developers in Seattle. They’re calling the new campaign ‘Defective by Design’ and have named Big Media, device manufacturers and proprietary software companies as targets. CivicActions is participating as a coalition partner in the campaign. Protesters donned HazMat suits, apparently to emphasize the hazard Digital Restrictions Management poses to their rights. There are a
Linmagazine, theonline newspaper for the Linux, open source and free culture communities in Israel just released an article (in hebrew) on our launch.
There is no more important cause for electronic freedoms and privacy than the call for action to stop DRM from crippling our digital future.
The time is
now. Join us.
By joining the DEFECTIVE BY DESIGN community, we commit to each other that together, as our numbers grow, we will use our collective voices to demand that governments, corporations, and politicians take the steps necessary to protect our rights. Today I join this community and I request to be immediately notified of direct actions that I can join in my local community.
* A password and instructions will be sent to this e-mail address, so make sure it is accurate.
** We'll SMS you with urgent actions in your area
*** International Codes OK
Ward Vandewege writes "I’ve had it. I’m sick of region encoding on DVDs and video games. I’m sick of crippled (’copy-protected’) audio CDs. I’m sick of DRM’d music. I’m sick of the fact that I can’t legally use the DVDs I purchased on the computer I purchased because it runs GNU/Linux." Read Ward's Blog.
Dana Blankenhorn at ZDNet writes "The Free Software Foundation brought its campaign against Digital Rights Management to Seattle this morning, in the form of a "flash protest." Read it.
I've posted a short video clip of this morning's DefectiveByDesign DRM Elimination Crew action at the Microsoft WinHEC2006 in Seattle. About 25 DefectiveByDesign members came out around 7:30 to spread warn WinHEC attendees of the dangers of DRM.
For videos check out the group on YouTube
and for pictures on Flickr
