"...Stallman, the widely-recognized founder of the free software movement, argued in front of a Yale Political Union audience of about 125 students that companies should not be allowed to use digital restrictions management to limit the rights of software users.

Earlier this year, the last of the four major music labels offered its respective catalog for digital download to Amazon.com's music service in the MP3 format with no digital copy protections, giving users the ability to freely transfer songs to any portable MP3 music player.

As Steve Jobs and Apple prepared to announce their new tablet device, activists opposed to Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) from the group Defective by Design were on hand to draw the media's attention to the increasing restrictions that Apple is placing on general purpose computers.

DRM-free music sells at a much higher rate online than protected music, according to UK-based digital music store 7 Digital. In fact, customers buy it four times as often as they do DRMed music. As a result, almost 80 percent of the store's sales are of DRM-free content.

BinaryFreedom has launched a new campaign called FreeTheBBC
(http://FreeTheBBC.info), targeting the BBC's proposed DRM regime. The
BBC plans to offer old content only through Real or Windows Media DRM
technology. DRM, or Digital Restrictions Management, is technology that
artificially limits what users can do with media. BinaryFreedom opposes

At this week's Digital Music Forum, lawyers managing digital rights for Microsoft's Zune music download site and RealNetworks' Rhapsody said that they too believe digital rights management to be more of a headache than an asset.

Standard media players like iTunes, MusicMatch and Windows Media Player only allow you to manage your music and videos on a single computer.

Jinzora allows you to manage and access your media from any internet connected computer anywhere you are and provides a much richer set of tools to manage your collections.

"Neuros Technology, manufacturer of open-source powered, analog-to-digital video recorder hardware, is spearheading a new effort to educate consumers about" Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) "by establishing the 'Unlocked Media' brand..."

Via EFF http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/12/neuros-launches-unlocked-media-brand

Despite the recent announcement of "DRM-free" music tracks by Apple and Amazon.com, Digital Rights Management (DRM) is not about to go away. At least, that's the main conclusion of a report, "Digital Rights Management Update," made available this week by the market research firm In-Stat.