EFF asks the FTC to protect the public from Digital Rights Management

Rebecca from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez,

EFF called on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) this week to mitigate the damage that DRM technologies cause consumers.

In public comments submitted to the FTC, EFF explained how DRM gives industry leaders unprecedented power to influence the pace and nature of innovation, not to mention risking customers' privacy rights and the security of their computers.

EFF's comments were filed in conjunction with the FTC's Town Hall on DRM, set for March 25 in Seattle. The Town Hall is free and open to the public.

PDF: DRM Comments (Thanks, Rebecca!)

[#1 posted by Spikeles , February 11, 2009 6:50 PM]

It started off good.. But....

No right to refuse updates. The EULA immediately terminated if a customer failed to install any update. No more holding out on those hobble-ware downgrades masquerading as updates.

IMHO, if i was editor, i would have culled that bit or at the very least re-worded it.

[#2 posted by ab5tract , February 11, 2009 8:24 PM]

This is going to be an interesting ride. EFF, will you be my valentine?

[#3 posted by gadfly , February 11, 2009 8:32 PM]

EFF PDF to FTC wrt DRM...

madness.

(any suggestions for a TLA to replace "to" ??)

[#4 posted by supernova_hq , February 12, 2009 1:29 AM]

You know the system is broken when the EFF is asking the government to protect the public from a regulation designed to protect business FROM the public!

[#5 posted by robotrevolution , February 12, 2009 7:49 AM]

OMG! PDF about EFF asking FTC to protect US from DRM in WASH., where MS is! WTF?

PS: BBQ records from RIAA, use your PC to buy DRM-free.

TTYL.

[#6 posted by Glenn Fleishman , February 12, 2009 10:21 AM]

You can post your own comments to the FTC about this, too, or read the comments posted to date.

[#7 posted by Robotech_Master , February 12, 2009 1:06 PM]

If this works the way that other government requests for comment worked, sometime in the coming month all the comments received will be made public, and a period will be opened for people to write responses to the comments.

I hope it works out that way; it will be entertaining to see what arguments pro-DRM advocates put forward, and to see what various anti-DRM names have posted things without saying so publicly.

[#8 posted by Robotech_Master , February 12, 2009 1:16 PM]

I posted my last comment before seeing Glenn's just above it. I went and looked at the 700 comments the FTC had received, and clicked on a couple of dozen of them at random.

Not one that I found had anything nice to say about the current implementation of DRM. (A couple found the idea of DRM all right in principle, but had the same problems with how it is implemented in practice as the rest of them.)

That's highly encouraging.