Editing 86: Digital Rights Management

{{comic
| number    = 86
| date      = April 7, 2006
| title     = Digital Rights Management
| image     = sony_microsoft_mpaa_riaa_apple.jpg
| titletext = If you're interested in the subject, Lawrence Lessig's 'Free Culture' is pretty good
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Digital rights management}} (DRM) is a class of methods for controlling digital files, such as by preventing media from playing on any device besides the device from which the purchase is made. It is used by several major companies, as it makes it more difficult to pirate media, which they claim cuts into their profits. Those companies typically also lobby for laws forbidding circumvention of DRM techniques, like the {{w|Digital Millennium Copyright Act}} (DMCA).

However, DRM is usually disliked by consumers, as it makes it difficult to use their purchased media. For example, if they buy a new computer, there's no guarantee that their DRM-covered media will be usable on the new computer. Thus, [[Black Hat]] is suggesting to the pro-DRM organizations {{w|Sony}}, {{w|Microsoft}}, the {{w|Motion Picture Association of America}} (MPAA), the {{w|Recording Industry Association of America}} (RIAA), and {{w|Apple Inc.|Apple}} that they stop their DRM-fiddling and lobbying, and he'll stop his inexorable ice-wall. However, the "ice-wall" in question is a glacier, which moves much too slowly to be a threat to any of the organizations.{{Citation Needed}}  (Alternatively, Black Hat is in fact controlling the wall of ice to make it move quickly enough to be a threat to these organizations, in which case forcing them to eliminate DRM would be little trouble for someone with such immense power at his disposal.)

The title text refers readers to law professor {{w|Lawrence Lessig}}'s book ''{{w|Free Culture (book)|Free Culture}}''.

==Trivia==
There appears to be a larger version of Black Hat, drawn in pencil and erased, behind him. The smaller figure makes the inexorably advancing wall of ice appear correspondingly larger.

==Transcript==
:[Black Hat is standing on an advancing glacier.]
:Black Hat: Dear Sony, Microsoft, the MPAA, the RIAA, and Apple: Let's make a deal. You stop trying to tell me where, when, and how I play my movies and music, and I won't crush your homes under my inexorably advancing wall of ice.

{{comic discussion}}
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