iPad is iBad for freedom--sign the petition
What is DRM? Digital Restrictions Management. DefectiveByDesign.org is a broad-based anti-DRM campaign that is targeting Big Media, unhelpful manufacturers and DRM distributors. The campaign aims to make all manufacturers wary about bringing their DRM-enabled products to market. DRM products have features built-in that restrict what jobs they can do. These products have been intentionally crippled from the users' perspective, and are therefore "defective by design". Learn more about our campaign
Write to us, [email protected] with news, ideas, feedback and your event photographs.
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.
They say that they want to protect the devices from "unauthorized usage" (i.e. theft). For that reason, your device will take a photo of the person who uses it and the surrounding place, it will record his or her voice and it will record his or her heartbeats. Once it suspects something, it will send the information to Apple which will talk to the "responsible party."
To be continuously able to access millions of devices and know exactly who uses each one of them and where they are is too much for securing anything. It is a clear dedication for people's properties to surveillance tools that can be misused or cracked, as we learned from the Swindle.
The spying technology will also detect and prevent any tinkering in the name of security and preventing thieves from disabling the protection. When users can't control the technology, it's not about their security -- it's about Apple's.
Please join us in taking a stand against such malicious features.
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.
We're compiling a list of colleges and other schools that either
require or supply DRM-laden hardware, such as the iPod, iPhone,
iPad or Amazon Kindle. Feel free to add other DRM-laden devices
too, but these are the most commonly found. We need your help to
do it!
Take action
