> The real question is what we can do to fight DRM. > Of course all this only applies to DRM content, and companies advocating it. Non-DRM offerings like gog.c

> The real question is what we can do to fight DRM. > Of course all this only applies to DRM content, and companies advocating it. Non-DRM offerings like gog.com, independent artists etc. are fine and should be paid for if used What else? The root of the problem seems to be that major media companies are demanding DRM. For most of media that most people want to consume, there are no DRM-free alternatives, except pirating, which does carry some risks. It's hard to recommend pirating as a solution to the average media consumer, since the legal consequences can be bankrupting, and avoiding those risks ("just set up an anonymous VPN for your torrents!") requires technical know-how that most don't have. I think we need more thought about the following: 1. How can we convince the producers of popular media to release it without DRM? Many will say it can't happen without a serious change in the structure of the media business; but there might be some room for solutions here, like Mozilla's "watermarking" idea, that give these companies most of what they're looking for (more control over distribution and remedies for infringement) without making the copies of this media basically unusable from a consumer's perspective. Legal remedies were enough for these companies before the rise of digital media and the Internet; could publishers be convinced to abandon DRM if a better legal framework for distribution and infringement was available? 2. How can we get people to like, and pay for, media that is produced and released without DRM by independent publishers? As others have pointed out, these publishers generally already know that DRM is not in their interest. But they have two problems: it's hard for people to find their stuff, and they don't have the capital to compete with large media companies on production value. What can be done to lower the barriers here? New tools that make indexing and searching for DRM-free media easy for consumers? New tools that make producing and marketing high-quality media easy for publishers? What should those look like?