Vendors Are Keeping Too Many Rights
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Technology vendors strive for lock-in. They lock us in with obvious tricks, such as Microsoft with its file formats, a monopoly mechanism as pervasive as its Windows desktop control. They control us with digital rights management (DRM, more properly called digital restrictions management) schemes that force us to break the law to make backups or even to quote from other works. They forbid us from tweaking or substituting, as ink-jet printer companies try to do when they misuse copyright laws to make life hard for other companies that want to sell us cheaper ink. They create cartels and impose rules like the DVD regional coding scheme, which keeps us from watching a movie we buy in Europe on a DVD player we bought in the U.S. Governments do their part. They use regulations to keep vital technology from becoming ubiquitous, such as the U.S. government's export-control restrictions that still give most e-mail messages all the data security of postcards. It just goes on and on.
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