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Dear DRM Elimination Crew,

It's common to feel a little uneasy when it comes to Disney. Most
people know that the mouse didn't get to where he is now by himself,
and that behind him there are more shadowy people wearing suits than
their cheerful advertising admits. Likewise, the intricate control and
extensive surveillance they have over their parks can be seen as a
[playground for dystopia][1].

Over the last few decades, the company has grown tremendously, with
billion dollar franchises such as *Star Wars* and the Marvel universe
making up only a fraction of the Disney empire, in addition to the
complete film catalog of 20th Century Fox. Disney's leadership in the
movie world has given them immense power that they have a rich history
of abusing, as we've seen with the "[Mickey Mouse Protection Act][2],"
and the notorious [Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)][3].

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Like the witch with her cauldron, Disney executives were concocting
something evil when they were brewing up Disney+. It needed just the
right amount of poison to be palatable: not enough to where it would
turn everyone away, but not so little that users would be able to
actually take a screenshot of the film that they are watching.
Maleficent is more than just a character in a Disney film; it's an apt
descriptor for the behavior of Disney itself when it comes to their
attack on culture through [Digital Restrictions Management (DRM)][4].

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Along with the steady wave of advertising, Disney+ drew early comments
from concerned free software developers like [Hans de Goede][5], who
was among the first to point out that Disney+ would be using the
highest restriction level of Widevine DRM. Widevine is a scheme that's
familiar to anti-DRM activists, and is one commonly embedded in
Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), the World Wide Web's Consortium's
initiative to create a [Hollyweb][6] out of the Internet. For a short
time, this made the Disney+ "service" incompatible with all
[GNU/Linux][7] systems, Chromebooks, and many older Android
devices. Though public comment led them to loosen the shackles a
little, that doesn't mean that your favorite films are any less
imprisoned.

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Disney+'s use of DRM is making an absurd reversal of its own mission
statement of "[inspiring hope and sparking the curiosity of all
ages][8]." One wonders how much hope Disney thinks it is going to
instill by shackling more than a century of media to a malicious DRM
scheme, and how much curiosity they plan to spark in delivering their
catalog in a black box. Given that the Disney corpus has drawn much of
their inspiration from [world][9] [myths][10] [in][11] [the][12]
[public][13] [domain][14], we would hope that they would recognize the
importance of keeping cultural works accessible and free from digital
restrictions and false scarcity. The time and energy that goes into
"[imagineering][15]" should not be dedicated to finding new ways to
punish users. At the start of 2020, and as [Copyright
Week][16] reminded us, we should be conscious of how public domain works are being
used to create derivative works that are digitally restricted.

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This isn't the last you will be hearing from us on this topic. If
Disney+ is aiming to restrict streaming media just like Netflix, it
will be an issue that the Defective by Design campaign will be
campaigning around for a long time to come. For the time being, refuse
to subscribe to Disney+, and ask your friends and relatives to do the
same. Let them know that when a corporation locks a century of culture
in an impenetrable vault, our world really does become smaller after
all.

In solidarity,
Greg Farough
Campaigns Manager

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