Digital rights management (DRM) is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale.

Like I told bob last week, THAT is the definition of DRM. Which, as is rather obvious, DOES indeed violate a person’s rights. Notably, “limit the use of digital content and devices after sale”. Note that word “limit”. Limit is “something that bounds, restrains, or confines”. Do I go on?

Even if you have the right to copy something, it doesn’t follow that it violates your rights to sell you something that is difficult to copy. Can you cite the source of your alleged right to be free from any limitation on your ability to copy?

That argument has been tried and failed:

Defendant relies heavily on congressional intent to preserve fair use but that congressional intent does not change the analysis. The Act expressly disclaims any intent to affect the rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including the right of fair use. 17 U.S.C. ? 1201(c). Congress’ expressed intent to preserve the right of fair use is not inconsistent with a ban on trafficking in circumvention technologies, even those that could be used for fair use purposes rather than infringement. Fair use of a copyrighted work continues to be permitted, as does circumventing use restrictions for the purpose of engaging in a fair use, even though engaging in certain fair uses of digital works may be made more difficult if tools to circumvent use restrictions cannot be readily obtained.

The inescapable conclusion from the statutory language adopted by Congress and the legislative history discussed above is that Congress sought to ban all circumvention tools because most of the time those tools would be used to infringe a copyright. Thus, while it is not unlawful to circumvent for the purpose of engaging in fair use, it is unlawful to traffic in tools that allow fair use circumvention. That is part of the sacrifice Congress was willing to make in order to protect against unlawful piracy and promote the development of electronic commerce and the availability of copyrighted material on the Internet.

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Defendant’s arguments are not persuasive. First, the DMCA does not ?eliminate? fair use. Although certain fair uses may become more difficult, no fair use has been prohibited. Lawful possessors of copyrighted works may continue to engage in each and every fair use authorized by law. It may, however, have become more difficult for such uses to occur with regard to technologically protected digital works, but the fair uses themselves have not been eliminated or prohibited.

For example, nothing in the DMCA prevents anyone from quoting from a work or comparing texts for the purpose of study or criticism. It may be that from a technological perspective, the fair user my find it more difficult to do so?quoting may have to occur the old fashioned way, by hand or by re-typing, rather than by ?cutting and pasting? from existing digital media. Nevertheless, the fair use is still available. Defendant has cited no authority which guarantees a fair user the right to the most technologically convenient way to engage in fair use. The existing authorities have rejected that argument. See Corley, 273 F.3d at 459 (?We know of no authority for the proposition that fair use, as protected by the Copyright Act, much less the Constitution, guarantees copying by the optimum method or in the identical format of the original…. Fair use has never been held to be a guarantee of access to copyrighted material in order to copy it by the fair user’s preferred technique or in the format of the original.?)

United States v. Elcom Ltd., 203 F. Supp. 2d 1111, 1125-31 (N.D. Cal. 2002).

Third, the Appellants have provided no support for their premise that fair use of DVD movies is constitutionally required to be made by copying the original work in its original format.34 Their examples of the fair uses that they believe others will be prevented from making all involve copying in a digital format those portions of a DVD movie amenable to fair use, a copying that would enable the fair user to manipulate the digitally copied portions. One example is that of a school child who wishes to copy images from a DVD movie to insert into the student’s documentary film. We know of no authority for the proposition that fair use, as protected by the Copyright Act, much less the Constitution, guarantees copying by the optimum method or in the identical format of the original. Although the Appellants insisted at oral argument that they should not be relegated to a ?horse and buggy? technique in making fair use of DVD movies,35 the DMCA does not impose even an arguable limitation on the opportunity to make a variety of traditional fair uses of DVD movies, such as commenting on their content, quoting excerpts from their screenplays, and even recording portions of the video images and sounds on film or tape by pointing a camera, a camcorder, or a microphone at a monitor as it displays the DVD movie. The fact that the resulting copy will not be as perfect or as manipulable as a digital copy obtained by having direct access to the DVD movie in its digital form, provides no basis for a claim of unconstitutional limitation of fair use. A film critic making fair use of a movie by quoting selected lines of dialogue has no constitutionally valid claim that the review (in print or on television) would be technologically superior if the reviewer had not been prevented from using a movie camera in the theater, nor has an art student a valid constitutional claim to fair use of a painting by photographing it in a museum. Fair use has never been held to be a guarantee of access to copyrighted material in order to copy it by the fair user’s preferred technique or in the format of the original.

Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Corley, 273 F.3d 429, 459 (2d Cir. 2001).

I’m just not buying your arguments, and I’m not aware of any court that ever has.