Lessig’s ‘Free Culture’ Now Available with DRM
Written by Ben Jones on September 28, 2008There is a continuing battle surrounding Digital Rights Management (DRM). While most rights holders see it as a way of maximizing their profits, users see it as a way to reduce their ability to actually use the products they bought, the way they want to. Ironically, one of the books that spells out what is wrong with DRM, is now available with DRM.
DRM has managed to become widespread without the knowledge of many. DVDs, MP3s, books, software, games and even audio CDs (although such DRM’d CDs are not allowed to use the CD logo), they can all come with DRM nowadays. DRM issues occasionally hit the headlines, with instances like the Sony Rootkit lawsuits and HD-DVD fiasco, with TorrentFreak even running a competition to design an anti- DRM T-shirt last year (results are here).
The problem with DRM is that it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. The only people who are negatively affected are honest customers, since pirates will get their DRM-free version off BitTorrent anyway. In fact, DRM seems to produce an increase in downloads over legitimate sales, with the ‘Spore’ fiasco as a recent example.
Public reaction to DRM is not favorable, and has been growing worse (such as when a DRM-based service closes). Even though some retailers have started to sell their goods without DRM, others have not, or have released products selling stuff ONLY in DRM encumbered formats. A prime example of without DRM is Amazon, with its music, and an example of with DRM is Amazon and their Kindle ebook reader. Kindle ebooks are sold complete with DRM, locking the books to a single system. This applies to all Kindle ebooks sold via Amazon.
One of the Kindle e-books looks a little out of place with DRM though. A member of the US-based Students for Free Culture organization informed TorrentFreak that the book Free Culture, by Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, is available through the service. The book deals with the rise of the copyright situation in the US, and how laws in other areas were changed to keep pace with advances in technology, sometimes making obsolete decades, or centuries of precedent.
The fact that this book is available in a DRM format might not seem all that important, except that the book itself spells out what is wrong with DRM. The book is available as a 100% free download on the book’s official site. However, short of violating the DMCA by circumventing the DRM, it is hard to put the pdf version of the book on the Kindle, exemplifying the problem. Most ironically, though, is that the subtitle of the book is “How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity”, so the book has become its own example.
Prof. Lessig will be giving a keynote speech at SFC’s “Free Culture 08” on October 11th.
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29 Responses
screw DRM
The DRM needs to be completely gone from the Kindle e-books, this is quite simple. Has someone managed to get rid of the DRM from Kindle e-books yet?
Roze
http://www.28chan.org/apstdt/
“The problem with DRM is that it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. The only people who are negatively affected are honest customers, since pirates will get their DRM-free version off BitTorrent anyway”
Yep,prime example in Spore (as you pointed out) :
http://www.ezee.se/articles-blog/2008/09/09/drm-may-sound-like-a-dream-but-its-not-ea-told-in-a-very-polite-way-to-go-f-itself/
“The only people who are negatively affected are honest customers, since pirates will get their DRM-free version off BitTorrent anyway.”
what does piracy have to do with filesharing?
Ben?
tell us please …
Can’t you convert PDFs to a Kindle happy format?
Lawrence Lessig is the pirate’s absolute BIGGEST influential ally when it comes to anti-DRM, pro-piracy, etc. The guy created Creative Commons, and on top of it, he’s a lawyer and professor with actual influence. Therefore it would be horribly bad to call him out on this topic and make a big deal out of it. Talk about biting the hand that feeds, good lord.
This isn’t his problem — he came out and said many months ago that he tried to get his books to be released DRM-free and they would not.
And you waited until the last paragraph to mention that the guy is GIVING AWAY his entire book as a DRM-free PDF download? Give me a break. And no, sending a PDF to a Kindle is not difficult or illegal.
Get your shit together, and don’t tear down your allies.
hell yeah!
Daniel, Get out of your own asshole.
“what does piracy have to do with filesharing?”
Piracy means file-sharing that infringes on copyrights.
http://dictionary.reference.com/dic?q=piracy&search=search
@8 Meaning what exactly? I can think of many reasons why attacking your allies is a bad idea, and not very many for the opposite.
Daniel’s right, this guy is very good. I’ve read about him and I’m going to read his book sometime, hopefully.
Daniel, no one, especailly me, was intending to attack Lessig. If anything, the point of the piece is that its usually not down to the authors about DRM, but the middlemen instead.
DRm is looked upon as the solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, not in the way people think of, and that was the point of the article; they even slap DRM on books *ATTACKING* DRM
Actually, you can put any (non-DRM) PDF on the Kindle without violating any DRM. You could also put up the text or HTML versions of the book without any issues
I’m seconding the comment that says it’s actually pretty simple to put PDFs on the Kindle. I get what the original author is saying though.
“The only people who are negatively affected are honest customers, since pirates will get their DRM-free version off BitTorrent anyway.”
I think that this statement is completely wrong.
People who buy products with illegal DRM restrictions and
submissively accept it are not more or less honest than people who disagree with these unjust restrictions and decide to do something about it.
DRM restrictions violates your rights of private property and fair use of that which you paid; and this must be rejected.
In this point, I think that people who buy these products with DRM are responsible of supporting this nonsense and illegality… If the people don’t buy DRM products these unjust restrictions would not exist.
DRM violates consumer privacy as well, having to connect a “server” to open content that you paid for (referring to some music and movie paid-for downloaded content) is ridiculous and a waste of bandwidth
@Daniel
Man, this is very clearly attacking the hypocrisy that attaches DRM to an anti-DRM book, not an attack on Lessig himself!
Good points otherwise though.
Again I say Idiots.
Has anyone read this book? I just finished it, it is not against DRM, it is against Copyright Law in its current form.
He never said that authors protecting THEIR work was bad, he said it was that protecting work long after its commercial viability is hurting culture.
Please shutup.
@15
Care to discuss and plan things with others on how to take action, perhaps in a small-scale way?
one of the wroste writen articles on torrentfreak… makes me sad panda
Lessig makes a very interesting read. Gives you a good overview of the evolution of the law, and it’s ‘quirks’. He is sure no advocate of piracy, but is not slow to point out that some of the big media industrial complex players started out with behavior that would today be classified piracy.
I find it hard to read books on a PC … but thanks to the freedom engendered by Creative Commons you can read the book on your phone for free (libre and gratis). If you have internet for you phone you will be reading in a couple of clicks.
http://www.booksinmyphone.com/?list=book&id=lesl01
All hail Lawrence Lessig!
“The only people who are negatively affected are honest customers, since pirates will get their DRM-free version off BitTorrent anyway.”
what does piracy have to do with filesharing?
Ben?
tell us please …
A agree with Daniel, the article and especially the title does come across as an attack Lessig.
Come on Torrentfreak, this is nowhere near up to your usually excellent editorial levels. Definately one of theworst written articles I’ve ever read on this great site.
quote1: “A agree with Daniel, the article and especially the title does come across as an attack Lessig.”
its called irony. look it up
quote2:”what does piracy have to do with filesharing?
Ben?
tell us please”
DRM is protection used as stated, primary against pirates(that is expresion used by ppl who created and forcing DRM), but also have extendive negative effect on people who purchased the product.
torrentfreak is, as you can find in ABOUT: TorrentFreak is a weblog dedicated to bringing the latest news about BitTorrent and EVERYTHING that is closely related to this popular filesharing protocol.
hope you get the point…
im not Ben, but I hope that post works for you anyway :p
its how i see that.
and i see that i made few spelling mistakes, english is not my native language, but i think you still can understand what i wanted to say ;)
First the library at Alexandria, and now this … great loss to the world of information, locked in DRM.
@6 Daniel
“Lawrence Lessig is the pirate’s absolute BIGGEST influential ally when it comes to anti-DRM, pro-piracy, etc.”
Are you shitting me?
A couple quotes from Lessig’s books I pasted a few months ago:
“Control, as I have argued, is not necessarily bad. Copyright is a critical part of the process of creativity; a great deal of creativity would not exist without the protections of the law. Without the law, the incentives to produce creative work would be vastly reduced. Large-budget films could not be produced; many books would not get written. Copyright is therefore an integral and crucial part of the creative process. And as it has expanded, it has expanded the opportunities for creativity.”
(Lessig, The Future of Ideas, pp. 107-08, 0375726446)
“A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don’t get paid. A culture without property, or in which creators can’t get paid, is anarchy, not freedom. Anarchy is not
what I advance here.
Instead, the free culture that I defend in this book is a balance between anarchy and control. A free culture, like a free market, is filled with property. It is filled with rules of property and contract that get enforced by the state.”
(Lessig, Free Culture, xvi, 1594200068).
Lessig is a reformist who seeks to preserve the illusion of ‘ntellectual property’ albeit in sheep’s clothing. Replacing standard copyright with some flavour of CC does nothing to question the notion of licensing itself, and thus it still supports (c)ongealment of otherwise unbridled data flows, the enclosure of information.
Lessig does nothing but advocate bigger cages and longer chains. Fuck that.
Copyleft/right are two sides of the same one sided coin. Reject all licensing.
Don’t purchase anything with DRM, that is the best way to throw that technology out. Simple as that.
There is no material with DRM that people NEED. I repeat, there is nothing you need that has DRM. You may WANT something with DRM. That is your problem.
The media company controls you because you want what they have (movies, music, books, etc). Do not desire what they have, and you eliminate their control over you.
Fuck up all DRM goods… downlaod them again and again and distribute them like hell
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