At Libre Graphics magazine, we try very hard to support the free expression of creativity by just about everyone. We fundamentally believe that one of the major tools of creativity is the repurposing of older work, rebuilding and modifying it to make it new, to say different things. Not only is repurposing important, but copying and modifying are ways of learning. Countless people have learned to draw by copying characters from cartoons or comics.
Now, because so much visual creation has moved to the realm of the digital, there are so many more opportunities to learn and work from the creative products of others. That’s why we make our source materials available, and why we show our working process through the activity stream of our Git repository. We believe that having unrestricted access to both the output and the source of a creative work is vital.
That access is one of our major reasons for being against Digital Rights Management. DRM, in many of its uses, does a lot to prevent the sharing and opening of digital works. At turns, it prevents people from viewing works on multiple platforms, from cutting up and modifying, from doing a lot of things that digital platforms are especially good at. It prevents us from doing things that, depending on which country we live in, we have the legal right to do. DRM puts technically-enforced locks on your ability to use and enjoy digital works.
We have our own reasons for supporting the Day Against DRM. The reasons above, about creativity, transparency and learning from each other. To learn about plenty of other reasons, and to take action, visit DayAgainstDRM.org.
Day Against DRM is an initiative from our friends at the Free Software Foundation, who do all kinds of other excellent work.
