Defective by Design

A few weeks ago, we asked you to reach out to Barnes & Noble about their Nook eBook reader. Many of you did, and while Barnes & Noble have yet to formally respond, we can continue to put pressure on them.

The current news is that Amazon plans to launch a color Android device, much like the Nook color. If we continue to put pressure on B&N, we can use this increased pressure from Amazon as a reason to make the Nook a device for everyone, not just large book publishers.

Read more, including a selection of your quotes to Barnes and Noble

American book retailer Barnes & Noble have launched the third model of their Nook ebook reader. We've previously written about the Nook, but until recently the Nook did not get much attention due to the limited options available.

Things have changed and now the Nook represents a real threat to users because of its invasive DRM, close relationship with DRM champions Adobe, and because of its use of the Android operating system -- which might lead many to think the Nook is not defective by design.

The music streaming service Spotify uses Digital Restrictions Management (DRM); push back by saying NO to Spotify's invitations.

After being available in Europe for some time, Spotify has launched in the United States with a publicity campaign inviting people to use the service.

Our conclusion: Spotify is using DRM to prevent things legally permitted even by overly strict US copyright law, making Spotify defective by design.

If you've logged into YouTube recently, you've probably noticed that they're pushing their Rental service pretty hard. YouTube Rentals brings full-length independent movies to YouTube, at a price -- they use Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to severely limit how the videos can be used. Many devices, including certain Android phones, are unable to access them at all.

This about-face goes against exactly what made YouTube useful in the first place -- the unencumbered sharing of video.

Over a period of 10 days, 138 people from twenty different countries made donations of $10 or more in order to send Nintendo's President and COO, Reggie Fils-Aime, a total of 220 bricks.

This year's Day Against DRM on May 4th was an overall success. Thanks to all of you who participated! Some of the highlights include:

14 blog posts in 4 languages — it was especially nice to see our friends over at Creative Commons joining us in the celebration.

In a little over a week, we surpassed our goal of taking 200 brick orders for Nintendo, to protest their claim that they have the right to "brick" (disable) users' devices when used outside of Nintendo's outrageous Terms of Service.

UPDATE: We surpassed our goal of 200 bricks! But, if you would still like to place an order, it is not too late. So, order your brick now.

UPDATE: We surpassed our goal of 200 bricks! But, if you would still like to place an order, it is not too late. So, order your brick now.

In mid-April, Sony's PlayStation Network servers were compromised and over 77 million customers had their personal data exposed. Two weeks after Sony learned of the breach, they issued a public apology. As part of this, they also are offering a bribe they are calling the "welcome back" program.

Clear your schedule for a worldwide day of action against DRM. On Wednesday, May 4th, we will be taking action to raise the stakes and increase awareness about the threats of Digital Restrictions Management -- in a very significant way!

Leo Babauta is a simplicity blogger & author. He created Zen Habits - a blog with over 200,000 subscribers, mnmlist.com, and the best-selling books focus, The Power of Less, and Zen To Done. He has dedicated the Zen Habits blog and Zen to Done e-book to the public domain.

We asked you to email Sony CEO Howard Stringer during our last call to action and Sony responded by shutting off his email address. Many of you then sent emails to the next email address we posted, Nicole Seligman, Sony Executive VP and General Counsel. Your action was effective — it was an important part of the overall public pressure put on Sony to back off.

Just because you buy a DRM-restricted game doesn't mean you can play it. An unfortunate forum comment temporarily left a gamer unable to play a single-player game purchased through the EA Store. Bioware forum poster Arno recently had his EA account suspended for 72 hours and then found he could not activate his previously preordered and purchased copy of Dragon Age II.

This month we're focusing our attention on Sony. Sony has been in the news a lot recently: suing developers for figuring out how to run free software on their PlayStation 3 consoles.

Both George Hotz (geohot) and more recently, Graf Chokolo — operator of the PS3 Hypervisor Reverse Engineering blog have been harrassed by Sony, with Graf Chokolo having his home raided on Feb 23rd.

As TorrentFreak reported earlier today:

An existing digital restriction comes back for a second attack. We have three ideas for action to take against the streaming media giants.

The Guardian has more details.

Hooray for Intel's loss -- Intel deserves this for its new DRM features in Sandy Bridge CPUs. If the world were automatically just, Sandy Bridge would fail over and over. But justice does not happen automatically: it is up to us to make Sandy Bridge fail.

"The Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman's work represents the most important work for freedom that this culture, the American culture, has seen in many many generations because it takes the ideas of freedom and it removes it from the ivory tower, and it removes it from lawyers, and places it in a community—a technology community—that is one of the most important communities defining the contours of freedom that most people in our culture and increasingly around the world will know."

Check out our new 2012 Holiday Giving Guide for more free software and DRM-free gift recommendations.

Please send this page now to people who might buy gifts for you, to make sure they don't get you a gift that would be bad for your freedom.

Well, it's official. Apple has now announced it's bringing the App Store concept to the Mac and it looks like they'll be restricting apps with FairPlay DRM too for good measure. When we first began talking about the problems with the App Store on the iPhone and iPod Touch, people wanted us to drop it and stop talking about the DRM tricks being pulled by Apple on the grounds that the iPhone wasn't a general purpose computer (it is, and the iPad is too) but rather an appliance.

In 2007, Amazon announced their music store. It would, they promised, deliver DRM-free music to U.S. Amazon users. And they did just that. With much fanfare, they rolled out Amazon MP3, touting music downloads for any device. On their website, they explain what's special about their music sales. "DRM-free means that the MP3 files you purchase from Amazon.com do not contain any software that will restrict your use of the file."

Natale Vinto writes:

"I'm a student from University of Calabria (Unical) , Cosenza Italy. I write you because for the journey against drm on 4 May we (students) have done a small event to raise the academic world to the problem of DRM and I've sent you link of pictures of it (with a very large delay!)."

This is our favorite:

Larger version

Kindles and iPads are making their way into classrooms across the world. Schools like Seton Hill and George Fox are giving iPads to incoming students. Monte Vista Christian School, in California, has sixty of them that are now in the hands of advanced placement students.

Once again, we're seeing boneheaded reactions to the failure of a DRM scheme. DRM is largely ineffective against large-scale unauthorized copying going on in Eastern Europe and Asia, and yet the large media companies are happy to parade the opposite as the truth. Instead of admitting their real goal of disrupting legitimate uses and restricting customers as much as possible — forcing them to repeatedly purchase the same records, movies and TV shows again and again — they pretend that this is technological progress.

Apple has a long history of imposing innovative restrictions on its users. The Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) used in the iPhone to prevent users from installing what they want or tinkering with their devices are well-known examples.

Yet not so many people expected their latest move in that direction -- Apple's recent patent application on a new spying technology revealed their plan to dedicate users' devices to their unlimited control.

With the new school year starting, many students will head off to
college for the first time.

For some, college offers a chance to learn about computing and
even free software, or to use computers productively in their
learning about other subjects. For others, college brings with it
a new restriction to the house of learning: DRM. Some colleges
are now requiring and even supplying DRM-laden hardware to new
students in lieu of textbooks and other materials.

Throughout the relatively short history of Digital Restrictions Management, we have seen various methods of user restriction come and go. Now, there is a new threat on the horizon: UltraViolet. A soon to be implemented DRM scheme, UltraViolet -- or should that be Ultraviolent -- is a joint effort between companies such as Sony, Adobe, Cisco, HP, Microsoft and Intel.

We now have an official winner of our sticker design contest announced in April. Our old stickers depicting the shackles of DRM went well with Apple's iPod advertising at the time, but now, with Apple's new developer licensing agreement and the release of the iBad, their latest restriction, our anti-DRM sticker is in need of an update.