[Gllug] Re: Anti-DRM event in Central London tomorrow!

[Simon Morris]

Hello all,

A quick review of todays Anti-DRM event.

I would judge today as a success by considering a few different factors.

We had between 14 and 18 people giving out leaflets and offering
information to the passing public. What struck me most was a young
American guy around 16-17 years old. He wasn't a member of Defective
By Design.. he wasn't a member of GLLUG but he had come across the
event on the Internet whilst researching his options on migrating to
GNU/Linux from Windows. We had a chat as he distributed leaflets and
he said the only factor holding him back from moving away from Windows
was his iTunes library and his iPod.

Interesting to see that although I and others were there protesting
against a situation that doesn't affect us directly (I don't use
iTunes at all) people were using the occasion to demonstrate their
genuine dissatisfaction.

The event started with myself and one other participant walking up
into the top of the Apple store with leaflets concealed cunningly
about our person. I managed to distribute leaflets to nearly everyone
on the upper level and have a decent chat with a group of people
before I was asked to leave.

The other participant distributed leaflets to the long checkout queue
on the bottom floor.

After being escorted out of the store we met the HAZMAT suited
participants being stopped and briefed by a police officer. To his
credit the officer just warned us about causing a public nuisance and
wished up good luck.

The HAZMAT suits were a good attention grabber and we distributed over
3,200 leaflets in 2 hours and 15 minutes. The feedback from the public
that took leaflets was probably about 50% fairly non-interested and
took the leaflet away, 35% read the leaflet on the spot and took in
the placards and paid some interest and the remaining 15% asked at
least what it was we were demonstrating against and allowed us to
educate them.

I didn't speak to anyone who was in favour of DRM.. the public
awareness of the technology is definitely there and some people had a
high awareness.

Only a very few people raised the topic of illegal file sharing networks.

The highlight of the day for me were 2 people who had stopped after
the shout of "If you are buying iPods today please take a leaflet" and
spoke to a demonstrator. After reading the leaflet and having a chat
they turned about and announced they weren't going into the store at
all now.

A lot of photos were taken today and they should appear in the Flickr
group tonight or tomorrow.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/defectivebydesign/pool/

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