Defective by Design's 35 day Holiday Boycott List

by Jason Sanders | November 27, 2008 at 10:11 am

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35 days until the end of 2008 gives Defective by Design 35 chances to unveil 35 DRM-ladened products that they think consumers should boycott this year. Just in time for the biggest buying time of the year, the anti-DRM campaign is encouraging users to nominate which products they think should be boycotted.

While the ever popular MacBook had the honour of being their first product boycotted, the most of the article concerned the iTunes store's restrictions on music, movies, and TV shows. Within the article, Defective by Design also linked to Steve Jobs' essay about DRM, and compared that with Apple's current approach to delivering content, noting that DRM has become more integrated in Apple's products.

To make matters worse, Apple's newest hot products, the iPhone and iPod Touch, offer extra opportunities for DRM, wrapping applications, even those available at little or no cost, as well as movies and TV shows in yet more layers of DRM.

And now, once again, Apple have pushed their DRM agenda even further, with the release of the latest revision of their MacBook laptop computers. The new MacBooks contain a hardware chip that prevents certain types of display being used, in an effort to plug the analog hole. Devices such as the HDfury can get around this, but this adds greater cost and inconveinience to what should be a relatively simple procedure.