The Free, Libre Open Source Software community cherishes its extensive ability to ownership on its own property. This expressed ownership is important. Why would anyone want other people to own their things? So our first HOWTO tip for all of you SOStopians is this; Break the DMCA. Mr Tulley says you should teach your kids how to do this, however I should stress you should simply to exercise your own right to ownership.

In a nutshell: buy a song from iTunes, burn it to a CD, re-import the song, and delete the original.   You just broke the DMCA by stripping the song of its copyrights.  Now doesn’t that make you feel a little more free? (To learn how to do this more in depth, feel free to check out the wiki page for this article.)

More specifically this breaks the DMCA because it takes the DRM off of the music track.  The basis is that this enables you to then share the music file with others, spreading copyrighted material that you don’t own.  Here though, the goal is to express that personal freedom.  DRM’d music cannot play on all music players, and when music has DRM on it you can’t expressively say its yours.  By taking the rights to your music, your freeing it in a sense.

SOStopians hate DRM.  They feel it restricts their ability to use their media in the way they want to. You’d think SOStopia would then fall because (*dramatic pause*) they could share that music (or other media). That may be true to begin with. But if they were to only share music, the music industry would crumple. This doesn’t sound very good except if you were to look in the long run. After this, a new strategy would develop. Maybe the music industry would develop an incentive structure for music deployment, or simply amp up the importance of liver performances. What do you think?

I’d like to hear all of your opinions on what could be done. “But Krijali how can I do that?” Well, I’m glad you asked. You could comment to this post, discuss this essay in the wiki, or even edit it in the wiki. SOS is all about the expression of the community. So, I hand off my pen.