FSF calls for International Day Against DRM

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has called for an International Day Against digital rights management (DRM) on 4 May.

The organisation hopes to raise public awareness about the ramifications of digital rights management software, and to show public protest.

"DRM attacks your freedom at two levels. Its purpose is to restrict your use of your copies of published works," said FSF president Richard Stallman.

"Its means is to force you to use proprietary software, which means you don't control what it does. When companies organise to design products to restrict us, we have to organise to defeat them."

The first Day Against DRM in October 2006 saw more than 200 organised meetings, thousands of protesting emails and the distribution of 150,000 stickers. There were also hundreds of small-scale protests, including Parisian campaigners handing themselves into the police for breaking DRM laws.

"Informed technologists and activists were instrumental in exposing DRM's harms back when most DRM was anti-copying software," said Richard Esguerra, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and supporter of the Day Against DRM.

"But DRM is now evolving as companies seek to restrict far more than users' ability to copy files. The International Day Against DRM is a fresh opportunity to rise to the challenge yet again and fight for technology freedom."

The FSF organises regular campaigns against Microsoft as part of its Defective by Design anti-DRM campaign.