Summary
Recently Amazon Kindle users who purchased copies of George Orwell’s 1984 or Animal Farm lost those novels when the publisher changed their mind about publishing electronic copies via Amazon’s portable reading device known as the “Kindle” (more deservedly known as the Amazon Swindle). These works are in the public domain in Australia but that doesn’t address the real issue at hand—the power DRM gives publishers and what that means in your life.
The publishers and DRM controllers inadvertently did us all a great favor: they gave us a low-cost wake-up call to the reality of DRM. Some of us were wise enough to never get involved with DRM in the first place, so we get an opportunity to educate others about what DRM really means. If you were raised on valuing technical glitz over valuing freedom and community, you may have acquired some DRM-encumbered media or device. You get a chance to think about issues of freedom and power. You can learn what the shift from traditional media really means and how digital media doesn’t have to deny users their freedom.
The underlying theme
What made this possible? How could one’s purchases simply vanish? This never happens with books, so why should it happen with e-Books?
DRM (more appropriately known as “Digital Restrictions Management”) is the key to understanding the loss of freedom and transfer of power. DRM is the technical means whereby a publisher can control what media a computing device has on it, or when a user is permitted to view/read/hear (experience, for short) that media.
This control is permanent for the lifetime of the device. So even after the device and the media are sold to the user, even if the device and media are sold again to another user (at a garage sale, for example), the publisher remains in control. Whatever the computing device is capable of doing, DRM can curtail the reader’s freedom to do that activity.