Tower Records protest

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE TUESDAY, 21 FEBRUARY 2006

CONTACT: Nelson Pavlosky | Free Culture Swarthmore mobile: (973) 580-7510 nelson@freeculture.org http://swarthmore.freeculture.org

FREE CULTURE SWARTHMORE STRIKES BACK AT DAMAGING RECORD COMPANY DRM

Following successful demonstrations by Free Culture NYU, Swarthmore Students will stand up for the rights of music consumers in a protest on February 25th at the Tower Records store on South Street.

Music consumers are suffering from restrictive “copy protection” or “Digital Rights Management” (DRM) software, digital locks placed on music CDs by record companies that are more interested in controlling what customers can do with their legally purchased music than providing an enjoyable product. Music locked down with DRM frequently cannot be copied to portable audio players or sampled for use in new creative works, and recent Sony DRM schemes have exposed their customers to computer crashes and virus attacks. Many other “copy-protected” CDs remain on the market. None effectively prevent copyright infringement, and all of them violate Compact Disc specifications and render users unable to exercise their fair use rights under US copyright law.

Free Culture co-founder and President Nelson Pavlosky said, “these sneaky DRM schemes endanger users and stop you from doing perfectly legal things like putting your music onto your iPod. It’s ridiculous; consumers don’t even know that they’re buying a broken record.”

The protest will take place Saturday, February 25th at noon at the Tower Records Store on South Street. It will continue into early afternoon. Free Culture wants to inform consumers of their fair use rights and warn them about the DRM threat.

“We need to get the word out about fair use rights,” said co-founder Luke Smith. “No one wants to buy a broken record; if you’re not allowed to put it on your iPod, what exactly are you paying for? We want record companies to replace crippled CDs and pay for the damage they cause to their customers machines. We also want to drive the message home: you can’t do this anymore, because we’re watching you.”

ABOUT – Free Culture Swarthmore is a student group at Swarthmore College, dedicated to building a world of active cultural participation and defending your digital rights. It received national media attention when its co-founders sued Diebold Election Systems for abuse of copyright law, and won a precedent-setting victory for freedom of speech and fair use. FCS became the first campus chapter of the international student organization FreeCulture.org in 2004, and is now one of over 30 chapters worldwide.