æ

Please Make a Donation

Step 0: Consider whether you are a false witness.

Step 1: Choose a color that attracts you.

Step 2: Copyright it.

Step 3: Claim legal exclusive rights to the color and make people pay money to use it in any tangible medium.

Step 4: Abolish DRM.

Step 5: Undo the first 3 steps.

DRM

The following statement responds to the forthcoming applicability and public speculation over the future of the web under the proposed standardization of Digital Rights Management (DRM) or to be more precise, Digital Restrictions Management in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). These theses against the restrictive encryption and extension of our media are being circulated to various artists, writers and users to collaborate and contribute to its writing and signature as The Society of False Witnesses, named or quantifiably unnamed in the rejection of support for the current proposal for using DRM’s encrypted extension of our media.

As the web has been our place of study, expropriation, appropriation, exhibition and conversation, we, as indisciplinary thinkers, artists, writers and practitioners, image, knowledge and ignorance-curious circulators reject the private and monetized delimitations that are imminently enforced by Digital Restrictions Management. The technological apparatuses that constitute the usership of the Internet are currently in a battle staged by the proposed indoctrination of DRM into World Wide Web Standards (by W3C into HTML5), giving different browsers control over code restrictions on usership and the online/offline circulation of digital media whether it be images, videos, software, ebooks, songs, etc. Virtual jurisdictions are being framed to monopolize and secure legalities and eventually monetize further the interconnected networks that have been porous sites of accessibility, advancement and enhancement for us, users and movers. We want to share. 

The profitability of technollectual media introduces a paradoxical withering away of technological development with an instantiation of boundaries of innovation under the guise of securing monetization and control. However, what is secured is not intellectual property, but rather the transferring of such minuscule profitability to the hands of a few, who in turn primarily secure their own position at the top by making improvements through collaborative exchange nearly impossible. The user-malaise of this proposition is furthered by potential anonymity rendered visible within an infrastructure of concentrated market surveillance while public exposure of cultural media circulation is further capitalized in its inoperability with non-proprietary software. We don’t want to reproduce the same laws governing and commodifying the world offline. We want to share and have our sharing permeate into the world – offline, online and in between.

W3C is currently recommending the application of Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) that would standardize the use of Digital Rights Management (DRM) across browsers. We refuse our media to be occupied by EME. We reject this enforcement on the media we spectate, circulate, reproduce and produce and call on W3C to halt all efforts to integrate EME and DRM-related technologies. We join and reach out to fellow users and programmers known and unknown to circulate and add to this petition. We want to share.

–The Society of False Witnesses

Step 6: Feel free to circulate and continue writing the aforementioned statement and
exercise.

This Exercise was Contributed by The Society of False Witnesses.

Make a Donation
Download PDF
Previous
Next