McAllister's attack on the FSF is both poorly thought and largely crying foul against an organization that is publicly objecting to market practices- one of the few to do so consistently and with an eye to the actual implications that technology and state intervention in technology can have.
While pointing out that the defectivebydesign.org caries some hyperbole, McAllister goes down the opposite road to argue an ill-informed libertarian perspective:
Emblazoned across the demonstration's home page is the alarming statement, "There is no more important cause for freedom than the call for action to stop DRM from crippling our digital future."
Sure. And if you buy that one, I've got a bridge to sell you that stretches from North Korea to the Sudan.
For starters, market realities right here in the United States put the lie to the FSF's histrionics. Apple's iTunes Store, which sells DRM-encoded music and videos to millions of iPod owners, is going like gangbusters. Clearly, despite DRM's widely discussed inadequacies and regular aggravations, more than a few consumers are willing to put up with it when the price is right. That's just basic free-market economics.
Here, McAllister does the classic move to conjoin "free market" with "freedom". Secondarily, he doesn't seem to realize that DRM is actually a market regulation- it prevents market activity. Even if McAllister's freemarket position is accepted (which it shouldn't be), the idea that DRM helps freemarkets is a misunderstanding of capitalism. Ironcially, while Apple's iTunes does use DRM, it's also one of the least restrictive DRM schemes, something that McAllister fails to note.
Of course, McAlliser's bad thinking doesn't stop there- he goes on to push that FSF is making moral arguments, completely missing the realities of DRM:
In this new worldview, DRM is Wrong. It is verboten. And who knows what other algorithm or subroutine might be cast out next; but who are we to question? By abandoning social and economic arguments in favor of a moral one, the FSF is in effect telling us that God is on its side.
FSF has been rather clear about why DRM is wrong and why it is an important issue to address. If anything they understand the social (and even economic) arguments vastly better than McAllister does. To quote Stallman from an interview on DRM briefly:
AACS, the "Advanced Access Content System," promoted by Disney, IBM (IBM), Microsoft (MSFT), Intel (INTC), Sony (SNE), and others, aims to restrict use of HDTV recordings--and software--so they can't be used except as these companies permit. Sony was caught last year installing a "rootkit" into millions of people's computers, and not telling them how to remove it. Sony has learned its lesson: it will install the "rootkit" in your computer before you get it, and you won't be able to remove it. This plan explicitly requires devices to be "robust"--meaning you cannot change them. Its implementors will surely want to include GPL-covered software, trampling freedom No. 1. This scheme should get "AACSed," and a boycott of HD DVD and Blu-ray has already been announced (http://bluraysucks.com/boycott).
It's rather clear that DRM has much larger implications that McAllister is willing to acknowledge. Given the realities of how DRM actually works and what corporations and governments can do with the data and restrictions it creates, McAllister's article is pretty much just FUD crying FUD
Free Software Foundation: Free as in "do what I say" By Neil McAllister
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