[Freegis-list] Protection vs. sharing (was: 52?North publishes first quality controlled stable release!)

[Jo Walsh]

On Thu, Mar 02, 2006 at 03:20:35PM +0000, J.J. Green wrote:
> DRM is the enemy not just of open source, not just of
> our society, but of our very species! Man without control
> of his tools is no more than a rat in a cage.

thank you for such elevating rhetoric!

This is from the GPL3 draft, http://gplv3.fsf.org/draft 
[[ DRM is fundamentally incompatible with the purpose of the GPL, which
is to protect users' freedom; therefore, the GPL ensures that the
software it covers will neither be subject to, nor subject other works
to, digital restrictions from which escape is forbidden. ]]

I listened to some conversation about this at the discussion draft
launch event a few weeks ago. It definitely filled my mind with
dystopian anti-fantasies; regarding "digital rights" enforcement 
acting against our potential rights to re-use and redistribute public
geodata; also about location sensing technologies being used to
reinforce DRM regimes in new and disturbing ways ("DRM... spatial
data... tripwires... geofences... oh dear.")

http://www.opengeospatial.org/groups/?iid=129 <- GeoDRM
http://mappinghacks.com/index.cgi/2006/01/17#spatial_drm <- paranoia
http://publicgeodata.org/Analysis_Of_INSPIRE_Text <- "intellectual
property rights" over state-collected spatial data in Europe.

I'd like to find a new, more honest phrase to replace 'DRM' with, like
where 'monopoly pricing' makes a good substitute for 'cost recovery'.


jo