Main News Support Us Resources About Myths Download Discussion

2001/05/01: DeCSS case back in court on appeal. 2001/02/15: LiViD releases Open Media System DVD Player. 2001/01/18: California court stays proceedings against Matt Pavlovich. 2000/08/17: New York court enjoins 2600 Magazine from publishing or linking to DeCSS; Emmanuel Goldstein Responds.

More news...

Open DVD Advocacy HowTo

The wildest stories have been published about the free DVD software that has been posted to the net. Some people blame journalists for not having properly researched their story, but the truth is that facts are hard to come by. This means that when you spot a ``bad'' article (you know the ones, the evil, evil, evil DVD pirates ones), you shouldn't reach for your torch and flame the journalist in question.

Rather, you should try to work in a more productive way by following the steps in this article. Of course, feedback is more than welcome. Please send some to feedback@opendvd.org. Thanks!

Goals

The goals of your actions will probably be to set straight the facts about open DVD software and/or try to defend your consumer rights. You want the journalist (or whoever) to see that humanity is not served by publishing sensationalist piracy stories; and that DeCSS and other programs are mostly useful for playing DVDs, that copying is simply uneconomical, etc... If you're up for a challenge, you might even try to ask them for a rectification or a more balanced followup story.

Methods

Such an ambitious goal calls for special methods and tactics. Here's a list:

• Stick to the truth, if you start spreading misinformation, people (and especially journalists) will hate you for it and choose to portray the story from an angle you don't want to see. In fact, since the DVD consortium has chosen to divert from the truth a bit, it will be a big help if we do stick to the facts.
• Be polite and patient, our story is quite a bit different from the press releases the DVD consortium has been giving out, so it's only logical that people get confused a bit and don't believe you immediately.
• Be clear in your explanations; stick to the main points. It's no use if you get wound up in details so much that the main story doesn't come across.
• Stick to the truth.
• Contact the people that matter, e.g. the local radio station, journalists, decision makers.
• Be polite and patient.
• Tolerate a little bit of error. No need to get yourself up in arms because somebody got some details wrong (but if we get something wrong, please tell us).
• Stick to the truth.
• Refer people to us or other ``authorative sources'' when you're not completely sure, or just so they have some leads to research their facts.
• Be polite and patient.
• ... and most importantly: Stick to the truth.

Whom to contact

Obviously you want your story to reach as many people as possible, you can do this by focussing your efforts on journalists, who can then (if they think the story is interesting) turn it into a nicely readable article (or radio story, or TV reportage) and reach tens of thousands of people.

• Your local newspaper / radio station: You are aware of what's happening in your region and there's nobody else there to contact your local media. Also, local media is very close to people and most likely to get the story across.
• Technical or HiFi/Movie magazines: The readership of these magazins will me most affected by what's going to happen.
• TV stations: This way you can reach a lot of people, but be careful. TV reports usually cannot be very in-depth and because of that they might lose the most important points of your story and report a story which leads to a completely other conclusion than what you wanted to get across!
• Talk radio stations: The people who listen to these stations are generally interested in things like freedom and their own consumer rights. Prepare your story and call in at a ``good time'' to tell the listeners about how the movie industry tries to screw them and, most importantly, what they can do about it...
• Other (national) media: These media are often difficult to approach (because they're big and swamped with stories) and not very effective in getting a story across to the audience (because they have to cater to a huge group of different people). If you're a ``pro'', you can reach the biggest audiences this way, however.

And now ... Action

If you've taken the trouble of reading this and want to do something about the fact that the movie industry is (illegally) trying to take away your legal rights, please follow the advice on this page and take the trouble to call or write your local media and/or other journalists. This is your battle as well as ours, please defend your consumer rights well. Thank you!

Also, if your (local) media decide to run a story about the DVD situation, please drop us a line and tell us where we can find (or announce) the story.

Mailing list

So, you want to get involved in promoting open DVD software and defending your consumer's rights? Become a member of the DVD Promoteam, subscribe to dvd-promo@nl.linux.org. To subscribe, send a message to:

majordomo@nl.linux.org

With the following text in the body of your message:

subscribe dvd-promo

More information

At the moment, I can't really think of anything. If you need to know more or have useful tips for us, please mail us at feedback@opendvd.org. Thanks!

The OpenDVD.org Group