Today is day against DRM 2013

Today (May 3rd) is this year’s day against DRM. I already (tried to) briefly explain the concept of DRMs and why they’re bad two years ago, on day against DRM 2011, so this time I’ll try to cover how to fight them.

First, you can spread the word. If you happen to be a blogger or journalist, the greatest thing to do would be to write about it. But even if you’re not, you’re in charge to create the buzz: share a link for instance to http://www.defectivebydesign.org/dayagainstdrm/, http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:DefectiveByDesign/Day_Against_DRM_2013 or http://www.drm.info on Twitter, Facebook, reddit, Identi.ca, etc. You could also share a banner or poster on Pinterest and such.

If you’re motivated to spend some $$ on it, you can even get the t-shirt and play the anti-DRM sandwitchman 😉

Then, you can support organizations campaining against DRMs. Of course, you can do so financially (cf the links I suggested in the second paragraph, most have a donation page a few clicks away), but also just be signing to show your support, for instance to support the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), which maintains drm.info: it’s important for them to be able to show they have a large number of supporters, so even if you don’t donate anything your signature matters (NB: their privacy policy is good, they don’t share your name, they only use it to publish the total number of supporters).

And finally, you can… vote. And no need to vote for the Pirate Party, just vote for or against brands. It’s voting day almost every day: you can vote with your money, simply by not buying DRM-impaired stuff. I have to admit I’m not very up-to-date on what not to buy, since I’m not much into portable devices (such as Kindles…) and already using mostly free software (like, LibreOffice instead of MS Office). But you get the idea: before buying something, check whether or not it comes with DRMs, and if it does, try to find an alternative. You’ll be surprised by how often it’s actually quite easy to find a DRM-free alternative, except maybe for games or very specialized software.

Well, that’s all I guess, for this year at least. The list is likely quite incomplete, but that’s already a fair amount of things to do. It may sound tedious, and if it does, well just focus on a thing or two, it’s still better than nothing 😉