Dear Anders,

Thank you very much for your interest in this topic.

Before I come to my plea I would like to explain what our campaign is about: The German Informatics society "Gesellschaft für Informatik" states: "If DRM prevails in the market then users will lose control of their computers" [1]. Symantec shares this opinion: "As a result, customers around the world will lose their ability to choose what security solutions they would like to run on their operating systems, and be forced to use only those solutions offered or allowed by Microsoft" [2].

This loss of control means that publishing houses, TV stations, the government (including its administrations), banks, producing companies and individuals will not only lose control over their graphics cards, computer screens and hard drives; but also over their mobile phones, digital cameras and any other digital device they might own. In the worst case, your hardware may even be destroyed by the manufacturer [3].

This development gets pushed by Hollywood and some media agencies, who are scared by users' freedom. But there is still some hope left:  Peter Lee, vice-president at Disney is of the opinion [4]: "If consumers even know there's a DRM, what it is, and how it works, we've already failed”.

We agree with Mr. Lee, that users don't know about the threat. Instead, we hope that DRM will fail (which would be to Hollywood's advantage - as DRM currently works nowhere more efficiently than on proprietary operating systems the media industry will contribute to Microsofts monopoly and will degenerate itself to their humble jumping jack) and plan a media campaign on this at drm.info starting at the "Day Against DRM" [5] on October 3rd.

Now we expect this issue to cause quite some media response - e.g. from broadcasting companies all over Europe. These might want to interview our vice president Jonas Öberg who is located in Trollhättan. Would it be possible that they rent your facilities for an interview?

kind regards

Joachim Jakobs

PS: Of course we would be happy if you would report on that issue yourself. By that you not only would provide a great service to private and professional users but would stimulate politics as well to think about questions like "Who compensates customers who got harmed by DRM."

[1] http://www.gi-ev.de/fileadmin/redaktion/Download/GI-Position_Urheberrecht2006.pdf [2] http://www.symantec.com/enterprise/security_response/weblog/2006/08/assessment_of_vista_kernel_mod.html [3] http://www.heise.de/kiosk/archiv/ct/06/06/148/ [4] http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4342418 [5] http://defectivebydesign.org/en/blog/636

-- Joachim Jakobs <jj@office.fsfeurope.org Media Relations - FSF Europe (http://fsfeurope.org) Tel: +49 700 - 373387673, Ext.: 4004 Mobile: +49-179-6919565

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