The 5 real reasons to avoid iPhone 3G:

We've made two additions to the guide to DRM free living -- Rhapsody and Naxos. Rhapsody is now offering MP3 downloads of lots of popular music, including all the major labels.

From their website —

Experience DRM-Freedom: Rhapsody MP3s aren't restricted by DRM. If acronyms aren't your thing, that means; when you buy a song or album from Rhapsody you can do whatever you want with it. Put it on your iPod or any other MP3 player, play it on as many computers as you want, or burn it to a CD as many times as you want.

Naxos has also moved to MP3 -- making audiobooks available in the format, with a huge selection of contemporary and classic titles, Naxos is a great place to get audiobooks.

What does this tell us? Well for one, Audible and iTunes are yet again, deceiving users with their DRM-laden materials. It also shows that more and more people are saying no to Digital Restrictions Management and that existing services are having to adapt to meet those demands.

Bruce Schneier has brought a new form of Digital Restrictions Management to our attention:

Microsoft is doing some of the most creative thinking along these lines, with something it's calling "Digital Manners Policies." According to its patent application, DMP-enabled devices would accept broadcast "orders" limiting capabilities. Cellphones could be remotely set to vibrate mode in restaurants and concert halls, and be turned off on airplanes and in hospitals. Cameras could be prohibited from taking pictures in locker rooms and museums, and recording equipment could be disabled in theaters. Professors finally could prevent students from texting one another during class.

It sounds innocent enough, until Schneier pulls back the curtain to show the real motivation behind these policies:

Don't be fooled by the scare stories of wireless devices on airplanes and in hospitals, or visions of a world where no one is yammering loudly on their cellphones in posh restaurants. This is really about media companies wanting to exert their control further over your electronics. They not only want to prevent you from surreptitiously recording movies and concerts, they want your new television to enforce good "manners" on your computer, and not allow it to record any programs. They want your iPod to politely refuse to copy music a computer other than your own. They want to enforce their legislated definition of manners: to control what you do and when you do it, and to charge you repeatedly for the privilege whenever possible.

Consumers are objecting en masse to the idea of their own computers and devices continuously and indiscriminately policing their activities via Digital Restrictions Management. So it's no surprise that Microsoft is hatching plans to soft-pedal these same restrictions under the term "manners." This is just old wine in new bottles -- Microsoft wants another way to control your activities.

Since they would be the patent holder, they can profit from selling this ability to monitor and control you to others. There's no doubt that their main customers would be the same media distribution companies who are struggling to cripple the technology that makes them irrelevant -- technology that enables many more artists and creators to share their works directly with the public.

Microsoft's patent abstract says:

Similar to some of the social manners honored among people, such as with "no smoking" or "employees only" zones, "no swimming" or "no flash photography" areas, and scenarios for "please wash your hands" or "no talking out loud", devices may recognize and comply with analogous "device manners" policy.

It's common for companies pedaling digital restrictions to try to find parallels in the analog world, to make the restrictions seem familiar and correct. But these are flawed comparisons -- no machine covers your mouth with duct tape when you enter a "no smoking" zone just to make sure that you don't smoke. Nobody breaks your fingers to make sure that you don't use the flash on your camera in a museum.

Digital restrictions require you to hand over your privacy and freedom in advance. They are inherently unsafe because people other than the intended parties can access these mechanisms for monitoring and restricting you. They are inherently untrustworthy because you aren't legally allowed to know what's going on behind the scenes on the device in your pocket, including the contents of its continuous conversation with whichever corporation it's reporting to. The purpose of the restrictions might sound benign but their mechanism is unacceptable -- and what these companies are actually after is acceptance of the mechanism, so that they can then put it to other uses.

Digital Restrictions Management and "Digital Manners Policies" both use the fear that some people might not do the right thing to justify treating everyone like a criminal and taking away our freedom. We shouldn't accept this justification to cripple what are otherwise incredibly useful and powerful tools for innovation and creativity. "Digital Manners Policies" are really "Digital Monitoring Policies," and we should refuse them.

On Wednesday, Industry Minister Jim Prentice introduced a bill that BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow described as making it "flatly illegal to break any kind of digital lock, or to violate terms in one of those absurd end-user license agreements that make you promise to agree to let the record industry kick your teeth in and drink all your beer, just for the dubious privilege of paying for a song at iTunes or watching a video on Viacom's website.".

Doctorow also points out that "[t]his amounts to private law: under Prentice's plan, Parliament would get out of the business of making copyright law, simply enforcing whatever copyright law the entertainment industry itself dreamed up". Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa states, the education provisions "[t]urn librarians into locksmiths" by requiring that they expire their digital materials after no more than five days.

This is an extremely troubling case, as all signs point to this being far worse than the US's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Let's not forget that Adobe under the DMCA had a Russian programmer, Dmitry Sklyarov, arrested and imprisoned. His "crime"? Distributing a product designed to remove locks from ebooks so that they could be fully used like regular books.

Especially given that consumers are rejecting DRMed media and moving toward services like eMusic, Amazon MP3, Magnatune and Jamendo, this would be a terrible law to pass. Geist notes that "the DMCA provisions are worse than the U.S. and the consumer exceptions riddled with limitations" -- the provisions include a potential $20,000 per infringement damage award that could see Canadian citizens threatened with legal troubles for uploading a snippet of a song to any video-sharing site.

Canada's excuse is that it needs the DMCA in order to comply with the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty. But this is no reason at all -- We need to make it clear that an unjust treaty cannot justify a further unjust law!

What can be done? Take action!

We simply cannot let this pass.

• No matter where you live in the world, if you are a copyright holder on any kind of work -- song, film, article, computer program -- please email the officials below to let them know that you do not want this law and that the people who have been demanding it do not speak for you.
• If you are Canadian, please write to your MP to protest the fast-tracking of this bill.

The Canadian government needs to hear that this law is Defective by Design!

• Write to your MP, and email the Industry Minister, the Canadian Heritage Minister, and the Prime Minister. If you are looking for a sample letter, visit Copyright for Canadians.
• If you send an email, be sure to print it out and drop a copy in the mail (no stamp is needed -- c/o House of Commons, Ottawa, ON, K1A0A6).
• Don't stop with email. Go visit. In his latest post, Doctorow suggests that every Canadian "Take 30 minutes from your summer, to meet directly with your MP". From late June through much of the summer, your MP will be back in your local community attending local events and making themselves available to meet with constituents. Give them a call and ask for a meeting. Every MP in the country should return to Ottawa in the fall having heard from their constituents on this issue.

UPDATE: Canadian Colalition for Electronic Rights have a simple form for Canadian citizens to easily email Prentice and others

Please Digg this story

Photo credit: Heidi Wholeness at Flickr

Take action: Digg the invitation, attend the Zuneral.

Harvard Free Culture has entombed an iPod and a Zune in cement in preparation for a Zuneral, to commemorate the death of Digital Restrictions Management.

Take action:
• Digg the BadVista.org blog post.
• Boycott Windows Media Center!

Microsoft is using DRM to prevent users from saving certain television shows to their hard drive. Saving such streams is a normal feature that comes with Windows Media Center, but they have locked you out of

Last night the DRM Elimination Crew attended the grand opening of Apple's new store in Boston -- now its largest US store.

The clear glass front of the store stands in stark contrast to Apple's unethical business practices, including using opaque Digital Restrictions Management software to take rights away from its customers.

Take action:
• Digg this.
• Sign the open-letter
• Customize your own letter from our template.

Microsoft is ceasing support for its MSN Music service. After August 31, 2008, people who have bought music from the service will no longer be able to move that music to different computers, or even change the operating system on their current computers.

Take action:
• Submit new sites for our Guide to DRM-free living.

Over the past eighteen months, the music industry has almost universally turned its back on Digital Restrictions Management. Major distributors like Amazon.com are marketing their music as "DRM-free MP3 music downloads." and companies like emusic.com are continuing to

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has some excellent news for DRM-free living.

The CBC will be the first major North American broadcaster to release one of its programs without Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). On top of that, they will be using BitTorrent to distribute the program, which is "Canada's Next Great Prime Minister".

Take action:

• Digg the Arstechnica story.
• Visit the ESP site

It's yet another example of what we just talked about -- DRM doesn't just restrict copying of music files, it infects your entire system and turns it against you. Apple is explicitly preventing DTrace from examining or recording data for processes which don't "permit" tracing -- processes like, say iTunes.

People are seeing Digital Restrictions Management for what it is this week, thanks to Apple's "Fairplay" DRM scheme.

Action alert: Don't let the EU sanction DRM

• Take action: Sign the Open Letter demanding that Viviane Reding retract her

Netflix DRM won't stream to HDD

When you buy into DRM technology, you put control over your computer in someone else's hands. This guarantees that unpredictable and unpleasant things will happen. Those with the DRM keys can decide that you no longer have the right to access the media you bought unless you agree to some new terms or buy some new tech, like Major League Baseball and Google Video have both done recently.

• Become an associate member.
• Make a donation.

. Tag the Kindle and Kindle ebooks on Amazon.

The Free Software Foundation's DefectiveByDesign campaign has set-up a fund to pay for expert witnesses in key RIAA lawsuits brought against US citizens.

If you subscribe to Netflix, here's an easy way to let them know that you will not be using their DRM download service. All you need to do is...

It's taking a while, but maybe Warner Music is finally starting to get the hint. They didn't get it after Steve Jobs showed initial signs of comprehension, so we decided back in April that someone needed to initiate a

Here at DefectiveByDesign we have been working towards the goal of making Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) a socially unacceptable technology practice. That message is spreading.

Read the protest report

Read the Press Reports and Response from the BBC

We have had beautiful weather in London since I arrived in the UK on August 4. But today with the protest about to kick off it's tipping down. I'm in my hired car and "luckily" I get a puncture right outside BBC television center on Wood Lane. With no parking in the area, this gives me 90 minutes for the road side rescue to come and change my tire without getting towed. With hazmat suits, large signs and flyers to drop off, this makes life much easier.

Read the Update!

Read the protest report - plus photos