Join the Defective by Design crew and celebrate International Day Against DRM (IDAD) this September 18th!

Defective by Design (DbD) is a participatory and grassroots campaign run by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). DbD raises awareness about devices and media encumbered by Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), showing what they really are: Defective by Design. DRM is the practice of placing technological restrictions on digital media, and we're working together to eliminate it as a threat to freedom for computer users, as well as a threat to privacy for readers, viewers, and those making art, media, and more.

Imagine a world without DRM

DRM is an epidemic spreading across the Web, infiltrating our homes, classrooms, workplaces, and just about everywhere else we go. Tools, technologies, books, games, movies, and music are coming to us locked down with DRM -- whether they are streaming or claim to be locally hosted.

For 12 years, we've celebrated IDAD -- making, organizing, protesting, and taking action to support the demolition of DRM -- and 2018 is no different! This year we will continue the fight against DRM and celebrate the work of activists, artists, and technologists who create DRM-free media and technology. You can read more about past IDADs online.

For IDAD 2018, we want to demonstrate how great life without DRM can be -- and how pervasive DRM is. Join the Defective by Design coalition this Tuesday, September 18th as we go a day without using DRM.

Join us and challenge yourself and those around you to a Day Without DRM.

How to participate

IDAD 2018 is your opportunity to tell others why you resist DRM, and convince them to join you.

Whether you're an expert at being DRM-free or you've never considered what a day without DRM could look like, we want you to participate this IDAD. By joining with others on the same day, we send a powerful message: DRM's days are numbered.

Before September 18th, we'll be publishing a guide to help you plan your Day Without DRM. It will help you identify some less (and more) well-known places you may encounter DRM, better choices you can make throughout the day, and options for games, music, and other media to enjoy.

There are lots of other ways to participate -- as individuals or groups, online or in-person. Details, ideas, and information will be coming in the next few weeks.

We'll be using the hashtag #IDAD.

Keep up with IDAD! All future updates will go to our DRM Elimination Crew mailing list. Sign up for the mailing list on DefectiveByDesign.org to receive important IDAD news.

Are you an organization or project interested in supporting IDAD?

We're looking for vendors of DRM-free media, organizations that support the building of a DRM-free world, and those who believe in the mission of DbD to participate by offering sales, writing blog posts, organizing events, and sharing with your members about IDAD. Please contact us at info@defectivebydesign.org for more information.

Together we can build a future without DRM.

Want to support Defective by Design? You can make a donation or join the Free Software Foundation as an associate member.

Photo of protester by Karen Rustad Tölva CC-BY 2.0

Help improve the Free Software Directory by adding new entries and updating existing ones. Every Friday we meet on IRC in the #fsf channel on irc.freenode.org.

Tens of thousands of people visit directory.fsf.org each month to discover free software. Each entry in the Directory contains a wealth of useful information, from basic category and descriptions, to providing detailed info about version control, IRC channels, documentation, and licensing info that has been carefully checked by FSF staff and trained volunteers.

When a user comes to the Directory, they know that everything in it is free software, has only free dependencies, and runs on a free OS. With over 16,000 entries, it is a massive repository of information about free software.

While the Directory has been and continues to be a great resource to the world for many years now, it has the potential to be a resource of even greater value. But it needs your help! And since it's a MediaWiki instance, it's easy for anyone to edit and contribute to the Directory.

On this week in 1940, General Charles de Gaulle told the French on BBC to defy Nazi occupiers. It is regarded as one of the most important speeches in French history. Resistance isn't easy, though, and this is especially so if the resistance cannot communicate securely. With this in mind, the Directory meetup this week turns to security software.

If you are eager to help, and you can't wait or are simply unable to make it onto IRC on Friday, our participation guide will provide you with all the information you need to get started on helping the Directory today! There are also weekly Directory Meeting pages that everyone is welcome to contribute to before, during, and after each meeting. To see the meeting start time in your time zone, run this in GNU bash: date --date='TZ="America/New_York" 12:00 this Fri'

When I was 23 years young, I read the book Free as in Freedom, a biography of Dr. Richard Stallman (RMS), who is also the founder of the Free Software Foundation, the GNU Project, and the GNU General Public License, which all had a great impact on me. I migrated 100% to GNU/Linux after I read the book, and contacted RMS eagerly. Stallman gave a positive response to my emails. A few years later, I decided that I wanted to contribute to the GNU Project, so I wrote GNU Sovix, a Web site revision system, which I've since retired as a project.

I started to work on the Free Software Directory in February 2015. I joined the FSF as an intern starting May 14, 2018, and will work through August 14, 2018 to fix bugs and work on a data import program that will import data from addons.mozilla.org and Debian main. I will be blogging about every two weeks, and I will go into more detail about my work in those posts.

When I was 23 years young, I read the book Free as in Freedom, a biography of Dr. Richard Stallman (RMS), who is also the founder of the Free Software Foundation, the GNU Project, and the GNU General Public License, which all had a great impact on me. I migrated 100% to GNU/Linux after I read the book, and contacted RMS eagerly. Stallman gave a positive response to my emails. A few years later, I decided that I wanted to contribute to the GNU Project, so I wrote GNU Sovix, a Web site revision system, which I've since retired as a project.

I started to work on the Free Software Directory in February 2015. I joined the FSF as an intern starting May 14, 2018, and will work through August 14, 2018 to fix bugs and work on a data import program that will import data from addons.mozilla.org and Debian main. I will be blogging about every two weeks, and I will go into more detail about my work in those posts.

I have been accepted as an intern with the Free Software Foundation for the next three months. My internship is scheduled from May 28th to August 14th 2018.

Outreachy is a great initiative to promote women and other underrepresented members to participate and contribute in free software.

I am a first year college student. This is my first experience with a free software organization. I am glad that I got introduced to the FSF so early in my career. I have worked on the Free Software Directory for about 2 months now, which includes 11 contributions and over 700 major and minor edits.

The reason I am interested in free software is more social than personal. I am a resident of India, and I see people around me that are exceptionally talented and have the caliber to progress exponentially. However, they do not have enough money or resources to do that. I believe that free software, if developed and given appropriate recognition, has the potential to help such people, not just in India, but all around the world, to learn and develop, thereby contributing to the growth of technology. So I believe that if I can contribute even a little bit to the popularity of free software, then I would be helping millions of people indirectly. Also, free software will help me to enhance my skills and to learn, as I can study its source code and easily use or modify it the way I want to. I think that experimenting is a great way to gain knowledge.

My experience at FSF has been fantastic. The internship here is not like working with the community, but working as a part of the community. The FSF staff is very kind and helpful. I am working under the guidance of Andrew Engelbrecht and Ian Kelling. They are very supportive and polite, and they reply to my questions actively. It's because of them that I am constantly motivated to work. I couldn't have found better mentors and a finer organization for my first internship.

So far, I have learned how to use IRC and how to edit MediaWiki. I am also learning to communicate in a free software community, and to make independent decisions. I've discovered so many interesting programs that are free software. I now understand the meaning of free software in a greater depth, and there is an abundance of information here that I've been able to share with my peers at college.

My first project for the summer will be to make the Free Software Directory responsive for mobile devices, and to try other ways to improve the site's reach and popularity among other people. This will involve adding extensions (or skins), and formatting the entries so that they are mobile-optimized. This will be a great opportunity for me to gain a lot of experience and develop skills. I am very excited. Thanks to my mentors and the Outreachy organizers for making this possible!