More and more these days consumer products, from games, music and movies to even cat-litter boxes, are being “locked down” by the manufacturers so that consumers have only limited access to the products they buy.
And that’s got more than a few people concerned.
Officials with the Electronic Frontier Foundation confirmed Friday that they have assembled a coalition of interests to ask the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to explore labeling requirements that would at least let consumers know what they’re getting into.
The problems, according to the coalition’s letter to the FTC, have appeared at Amazon’s Kindle, Unboxed and Audible stores; Apple’s iTunes and iBook stores; Google Play, the Kobo and more.
“These stores carry a mixture of products that are locked with some kind of technical protection measure (sometimes called DRM for ‘digital restrictions management’ or ‘digital rights management’) and those that are not technologically restricted.”
The letter continued, “The DRM-locked products are encumbered with a confusing spectrum of restrictions that consumers sometimes struggle to understand. Far more urgent, though, is the absence of any consistent signal to shoppers informing them about whether a given product is DRM-free or DRM-encumbered.”
In its announcement about the new effort, EFF said, “These digital locks train your computerized devices to disobey you when you ask them to do things the manufacturer didn’t specifically authorize – even when those things are perfectly legal. Companies that put digital locks on their products – ebook, games and music publishers, video companies, companies that make hardware from printers to TVs to cat litter trays – insist that DRM benefits their customers, by allowing the companies to offer products at a lower price by taking away some of the value – you can ‘rent’ an ebook or a movie, or get a printer at a price that only makes sense if you also have to buy expensive replacement ink.”
“We don’t buy it,” the coalition explained bluntly. “We think that the evidence is that customers don’t much care for DRM (when was the last time you woke up and said, ‘Gosh, I wish there was a way I could do less with my games?’).”
Since the FTC is “in charge of making sure that Americans don’t get ripped off when they buy things,” it is being asked to resolve the issue.
For example, some of the problems that have appeared: A travel guide that required a live Internet connection to unlock, making it unreadable on holiday, a cat litter box that only worked if resupplied with expensive perfume, and more. There even was a game that “bricked” a customer’s DVD-R drive, rendering it inoperable.
Other groups in the movement were Public Knowledge, Free Software Foundation, Consumer Federation of America, Humble Bundle, Baen Books, McSweeney’s, Weightless Books, Make, ECW Press, NoStarch Press, Tachyon Books and others.
EFF said last month it already is suing the government on behalf of technology creators and researchers to overturn a copyright provision that appears to violate the First Amendment.
The case challenges the anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions of the 18-year-old Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). These provisions – contained in Section 1201 of the DMCA – make it unlawful for people to get around the software that restricts access to lawfully purchased copyrighted material, such as films, songs, and the computer code that controls vehicles, devices, and appliances.
The lawsuit explains the ban applies even where people want to make non-infringing fair uses of the materials they are accessing.
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/08/10/like-games-music-movies-ftc-preps-lockdown/
from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2016/08/09/like-games-music-movies-ftc-preps-lockdown/
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