On Friday, July 23, call the RIAA and tell them you’re not gonna take it anymore. Before you do that, head over to Defective By Design and sign up so they can email you a phone number to call. The idea is to swamp RIAA executives with calls protesting digital rights management, or DRM. The RIAA is the Recording Industry Association of America. They would have you believe they protect artists’ copyrights when in reality, they are basically the political action committee (PAC) of the major record labels. In the past number of years, they have been pushing technology on consumers called digital rights management (DRM) that effectively controls how, when and where you can play music you purchase legally. We’re not just talking songs you buy from iTunes or Napster, we’re also talking about CDs. The DRM notice on Coldplay’s X&Y states that the CD won’t play on some PCs, all Macs, some car stereos and some DVD players. What’s the point of paying the inflated asking price for a CD if you don’t even know it will play on your equipment!? Not that you would know about this by looking at the unopened CD – you have to open it up to find this out. The best thing about all this is Coldplay wrote "Make trade fair" in encoded characters in the liner notes! Coldplay’s nothing – Sony Music recently agreed to a settlement over DRM they included on their CDs that compromised the security of your PC by silently installing an application called a rootkit.

So, DefectiveByDesign.org is offering up an easy way to hassle the RIAA and voice an opinion that would otherwise go unheard. It’s not illegal, and it will probably be pretty fun. In fact, if I knew some people doing this, we could exchange numbers and make more than one call. Whether you tell the RIAA you wanna rock is entirely up to you, though.

DefectiveByDesign.org’s email explaining the event after the jump.

technorati tags: RIAA, defectivebydesign.org, DRM, copyright, protest

In the last 3 weeks nearly 3000 people have signed up at DefectiveByDesign.org to take action. We have gotten emails from all over the world; people want to step up, take action and proclaim their support of digital freedoms by opposing DRM.

On Friday, June 23rd, we will coordinate a day of action, and this time it doesn’t involve yellow hazmat suits. You don’t even have to leave your desk. We will provide contact numbers for executives at the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and similar organizations around the world. We’re asking you to proclaim your support for digital freedoms by calling the RIAA and telling them what you think of DRM and what you think of them!

Spread the word about this call-in by asking your friends to register today! When you log in on Friday we’ll give you a special number to call. After you’ve made your call, you can let us know how it went.

Remember, tell your friends about this action, the more people that take part, the more fun this will be. With just 480 calls at one minute each, we can let the industry hear our voices all through the workday. The RIAA pushes DRM on us; it’s time to push back!

In Solidarity,

Gregory, Peter, Henri and the rest of the DRM Elimination Crew

More information about the RIAA:
The Recording Industry Association of America represents the major recording labels, and their influence plays a leading role in pushing DRM into our technology.

More information about DRM:
Big Media would have you believe that DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. However, since its purpose is to restrict you the user, it is more accurate to describe DRM as Digital Restrictions Management. DRM Technology can restricts users’ access to movies, music, literature and software, indeed all forms of digital data. Unfree software implementing DRM technology is simply a prison in which users can be put to deprive them of the rights that the law would otherwise allow them.