Protect Your Virtual Freedoms!

 Fair Use of Entertainment Media

Just as with software, music and movies are copyrighted material and have limits of use because of this. You should not make as many copies as you can and sell them on the street without the copyright owners getting their share of the profit. But there are fair use rights which we as comsumers are denied because the copyright holders of these types of media have gone overboard. Some of our fair use rights they want to deny us are making copies of movies and music on DVD, CD, and VHS media for our own personal use. I do these things all the time so that if I lose a CD, I have the copy I made to replace it for backup. I also like to put the songs from my music CDs on the computer and convert them to mp3 format so I can listen to them while I work on the computer without wearing out the CDs and also so that I don't need to try to fit a stereo in our already too cramped office. I make copies of our DVD movies so that we can leave the originals safely at home while we take our copies in the car on long family roadtrips for the kids to watch on the tablet PC while we drive to pass the time. These are all fair uses that some copyright owners want to take away. DRM (Digital Rights Management) is the initiative to take away our fair uses of this material. Below are some good links for those of you who want to help preserve our fair use rights.

Here is an example of one such abuse:

Below are some good links for those of you who want to help preserve our fair use rights.
• Eff.org/DRM
• M$ DRM Scheme
• Eff.org/Fair use and DRM
• Careful what you install!
• Accessability and DRM

Information for educating digital consumers

• Music service download guide