 I'm a big proponent of freedom. As a member of the Free Software Foundation, I often talk about the ideals of the Free Software Movement, which is to have the freedom to do what you want with your software, to look at the source code, modify the source code, to share the software. And of course, I'm a big proponent of freedom online when it comes to things like digital rights and digital privacy. But I'm also a big proponent of freedom offline as well. I think humans have basic inalienable human rights that should never be violated such as the freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion, those kinds of basic human rights. And I think the biggest threat to freedom for modern society is DRM, digital rights management. So what exactly is DRM or digital rights management? Well, for one thing, the term digital rights management is a misnomer because by its very nature, DRM actually doesn't give anybody any rights. It doesn't protect anybody's rights. DRM actually restricts users' freedoms. The users of those particular platforms and services, it limits what they can do. So really, in the Free Software Foundation's eyes, DRM really should stand for digital restrictions management. And that's typically what they refer to DRM as. So how does DRM restrict a user's freedom? Well, DRM, it's the practice of imposing technological restrictions on what you can do with your digital media. So we're talking about platforms like YouTube, Netflix, music streaming platforms. We're talking about gaming platforms such as Steam and all the other various game streaming platforms. We're also talking about eBooks, eBooks services, anything that is a digital media that you consume typically has DRM built into it. It's a set of restrictions that imposes limitations on what you can do. The platforms you can view that media on, the number of devices that you can view that media on. DRM tries to restrict your ability to share the media that you've purchased. Some obvious examples, Steam, you know, you can't share a game. Back when I was a kid, you bought consoles and you bought cartridges or disc of games. And then when I was done with the game, I could give it to a friend. You can't do that anymore because now everything's digital. You buy that game for yourself. You can't really share it with anybody. And if you violate the terms of service on Steam, they just cancel your account and you lose your entire game library. That's DRM. In many cases, these streaming platforms will limit the locales that you can actually view this media in, you know, depending on what country you are in the world. That's DRM. Another example of DRM is especially with games these days, single-player games that require you to be online and have an online account to be connected to their service to play an offline single-player game. That's DRM. Essentially, DRM has this effect of concentrating control over the production and distribution of media to just a handful of corporations. So the big DRM promoters, they have all the power. They have the power to carry out massive digital book burnings, right? They control everything that you consume as far as eBooks, you know, ePub files and things like that. We're talking about the big players in that field, of course, would be Amazon. The big DRM promoters, they can conduct large-scale surveillance over people's media viewing habits because they control everything you do as far as your consumption of that audio, that video, those books, those games. For those of you wanting to know some of the biggest offenders when it comes to DRM these days, we're talking about, you know, video streaming platforms. So we're talking about Google and YouTube. We're talking about Netflix when we're talking about ePub, you know, Kindle books and things like that. Of course, we're talking about companies like Amazon. We're talking about Steam and all of the other gaming platforms. All of it is riddled with DRM, the entire music industry. Any music streaming platform riddled with DRM. We're talking about the entire movie industry, the film industry. They love DRM. And what I find sad is that the people out there promoting DRM have done such a good job deceiving the public, that there are actually a large portion of the population out there that actually thinks DRM is a good thing because DRM is there to either protect the user, which it definitely isn't, or to at least protect somebody, whether it be the artist or the author or just the industry as a whole. I think generally the public thinks that DRM is there to limit copyright infringement. And not everybody thinks copyright is a good thing. I'm one of those people I would prefer that copyrights and patents didn't exist, but even if you think copyright is a good thing, DRM does not exist to limit copyright infringement. That is an argument that doesn't really make any sense. Such an argument, what that does is it attempts to make DRM appear to be beneficial. Like it's there to do a good deed to protect those authors, those game developers, those musicians, when that's not actually what that's there for. I mean really, let's think about this. Let's think about somebody that wants to circumvent copyright, right? Say I want to illegally share a file, a file that I'm not supposed to share. Where would I go to illegally share a file? Would I go to some DRM riddled streaming platform? No, right? That doesn't make any sense. If I want to illegally share a file with somebody, if I have access physically to the file and to the person I want to just give the file to, I'll do it that way. Or online, I would just go to one of these online file sharing services that there's millions of them out there on the web, right? DRM on Netflix doesn't do anything to prevent people from illegally sharing movies and films. That's not why that's there. DRM on these music streaming platforms doesn't prevent people from sharing their digital downloads of music that they happen to have locally on their system, right? That's not why DRM is there. DRM is actually there for more nefarious reasons. The truth is that DRM is actually designed to restrict all of the incredible possibilities enabled by digital technology. There are so many good things that we could do with digital technology. The possibilities are endless and the industry is afraid. The people that actually control the internet, the handful of companies, the big companies we're talking about, Google and Amazon, Facebook and Apple and all those companies, of course Apple controls the entire podcasting industry. They want to limit what people actually can do with this incredible technology. It's really about control. It's about placing control of basically the entire internet, right? They want to have control of the entire internet in just a handful of companies. That's what it's about. It's about tightening the grip because really DRM is designed to take away every possible use of digital media from you, regardless of whether you're doing something legal, illegal, it doesn't matter. They want to control every possible use of that media and then sell you like extras for that media, right? They want to control everything you can do and even like basic stuff you can do with that media, with that music, that video, that game and then make you pay to have the freedom that you should have already had for that media. So ultimately it all comes down to increasing profits, which I get it, corporations, they want to increase their profits, which in itself, it's not immoral. Every company wants to make more money. That's okay. I want to make more money as an individual. That's okay. But there are moral ways to do it and immoral ways to do it and at least in the eyes of those of us that are in the free and open source movements, DRM is definitely an immoral thing and it goes against everything that the free and open source community stands for as far as digital rights and digital privacy. Now, obviously, having said all of this, many of you guys are going to be interested in how you get around DRM. Hey, how can I circumvent DRM on various platforms? I can't actually tell you how to do that. And the reason I can't is because it is illegal for me to tell you how to do this. So although I and many of us in the free and open source community stand firmly against DRM and all its forms, I can't actually help you fight DRM or try to get around DRM because there are laws that prevent me from doing so. Mainly the DMCA, the Digital Millennial Copyright Act, specifically Section 1201 of the DMCA basically makes it an illegal activity for anybody to help anybody else circumvent digital rights management. And the DMCA is an American law, so that makes it illegal in the U.S., but there are also many European countries where they have also enacted laws that also make it illegal for anybody to help anybody else circumvent DRM. And yes, people and companies actually do get sued over Section 1201 of the DMCA. Matter of fact, recently we had a situation where YouTube DL, which is a free and open source program designed to let people download video from various video platforms, including YouTube, which is why YouTube is in the name. But you can literally download videos through YouTube DL from like a thousand different video platforms. And recently they were sued, they've been sued many times. But about three days ago, there was another major lawsuit where three big players as far as the music industry sued YouTube DL, as well as the hosting platform that hosts the source code for it, mainly over Section 1201 of the DMCA saying that they were basically helping YouTube DL and YouTube DL is helping people that use that product to circumvent DRM. Now what makes this particular lawsuit scary is they're talking about the music labels are talking about the big music labels all have YouTube channels. And matter of fact, the biggest YouTube channels typically are music labels on YouTube, the ones that stream music videos. And they don't want people to be able to download that music video through this command line tool, YouTube DL, because it circumvents. They say there's no real DRM on YouTube. I mean, what YouTube does is not strictly speaking DRM in the traditional sense because YouTube allows people to download stuff, download the videos from the platform. If they didn't allow it, YouTube DL couldn't leverage those options, those APIs and everything to actually allow you to do that. And it's not just YouTube DL, there are many programs out there that allowed you to download stuff from YouTube. Why? Because YouTube allows that. There are actually browser extensions. So you can get a Chrome extension that allows you to download a YouTube video. But the music industry, they didn't sue Google over having a Chrome extension, right? Because Google's a trillion dollar company. No, they don't sue anybody with deep pockets that could actually fight this. Who do they sue? The makers of some free open source software, right? That's who they sue. And they're hosting provider who is a company called Uberspace, who I've never heard of. So I don't think they're necessarily that big of a company. And if you're wondering what three music labels are suing YouTube DL and Uberspace, the three music labels are Sony, Universal and Warner music. And the music industry in particular has really gone crazy with DRM in the last few years because the music industry is kind of dying. Really, the music industry just never evolved. When everything went digital, the music industry wasn't prepared for it because they had been so reliant for decades on artists going to a music label and then the music label putting out albums, right? You know, whether it be vinyl albums or then eight tracks and cassettes and then finally CDs. And then once everything went to digital, I'm just going to download the MP3s or whatever from the internet. They weren't prepared for that. And now they they're throwing this fit, they're lashing out at anything that allows people to download anything on the internet. And of course, they're going about this the wrong way. And at the end of the day, it's not going to solve the music industry's problem, whether things like YouTube DL go away. It won't matter, right? It will make a zero difference to what is going on within the music industry. Ultimately, I find all of this stuff offensive because I remember before the internet, you actually physically owned everything. I physically owned all of my music, all of my videos, all of my games, all of my books, and I could do whatever the hell I wanted with them because I had a physical copy in my hand. I could share it with somebody. I could give it to somebody. I could do whatever it was because it was mine. I paid for it. Now, everything you pay for online music, videos, games, ebooks. You don't actually own. You don't have that physical copy that you can do whatever the hell you want with. In many cases, you can't actually download a physical copy of this stuff. You can't download a physical copy of that movie you watch on Netflix. You can't download a physical copy of that game you play on Steam, right? And if the streaming platform that you're doing all of this stuff on decides, hey, you know, you violated some term of ours. So we're just going to take away your stuff, you know, all the media you already paid for or in many cases, we're just going to cancel your account. We're just going to ban you from the platform. They can do that and that's scary. And that is definitely, in my opinion, a violation of freedom. And I think it's one of those fights that not enough of us are involved in. And if you don't know much about DRM or the fight against DRM, I strongly recommend you guys think about joining the Free Software Foundation. The FSF. Go to FSF.org and think about becoming a member. Also, the FSF has a website specifically designed to teach people about the evils of DRM. That website is called defectivebydesign.org. I'll link to both websites and the show description. Please check that out and help us win this very important battle. Now, before I go, I need to thank a few special people. I need to thank the producers of this episode. Devon gave James Matt, Michael, Mitchell, Paul Scott, Wes, Akami Allen, Lennox, Ninja Chuck, Commander, Angry Kurt, Diokai, David, Dylan, Gregory, Heiko, Costco, Lee, Max and Mike, Nitrix, Erion, Alexander, Peace, Archon, Fedor, Polytech, River, Red Prophet, Steven and Willie. These guys, they're the producers of this episode. They're my highest tier patrons over on Patreon without these guys. This episode would not have been possible. The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen. All these names you're seeing on the screen right now. These are all my supporters over on Patreon because I couldn't do what I do without you guys. I don't have any corporate sponsors. If you like my work and want to help support me, look for DistroTube over on Patreon. All right, guys. Peace. I miss having physical game cartridges.