Fighting Back against DRM

Monday, Oct 23 19:00 - 20:00

Sitterson 014, UNC Chapel Hill

EFF activist Elliot Harmon will be giving us a preliminary to his talk at All Things Open 2017:

The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) made it illegal to bypass digital locks or publish methods of doing so. Since then, digital rights management (DRM) technologies have begun to appear everywhere, from automobiles to home goods to medical devices. Today, modifying the software on your slow cooker might be illegal!

In this session, we’ll talk about how DRM has impacted innovation and how hackers can fight back. We’ll also discuss other methods that manufacturers have used to shut down secondary markets, including patents and license agreements.