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From: Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: IDAD, and where to get DRM-free files from
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2024 18:42:38 +0000
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	For some reason, I've never acquired any taste for anything
	"protected" with DRM, be that video games, music, books, -
	anything at all.  As such, I hardly can recommend any
	alternatives to resources that /do/ use DRM: I simply have no
	familiarity with any of them whatsoever.  Still, I guess
	International Day Against DRM, http://dayagainstdrm.org/ , is
	as good reason as any for sharing pointers to resources to
	obtain DRM-free files from, so here I go.

	(I suppose part of the reason is that back in the 1990s when
	I was learning computing, DRM hardly existed, or at least hardly
	mattered at large; and when it began to spread in the 2000s,
	after I was already introduced to the concept of free software
	- and found it much to my liking - I decided that I have better
	things to do with my time than to deal with anything that,
	after a fashion, requires me to prove my good intentions.)


	Two things I became interested in the 1990s are music and video
	games (and video games with good music in them; for an example,
	Electro Man, otherwise leaning towards being an unremarkable
	platformer, was pretty well done in that regard IMO.)

	By the time http://gog.com/ started in 2008, my interest in
	video games largely waned, but I felt like supporting them
	regardless; and if $ lgogdownloader --list-details output is
	to be believed, I now have some 286 titles in my GOG collection
	- aside of a few, all Dosbox- or ScuumVM-based (or Z-machine
	based, though still with a Dosbox-based interpreter bundled in.)

	Some of those games I've first /downloaded/ a full decade
	after purchase.  (Like I've said, I have little interest in
	video games these days.)  I think there's still select few
	that I'm yet to download for the first time, as well as other
	select few that I've downloaded and have yet to actually play.

	There's also http://classicdosgames.com/ for shareware and
	freeware titles (and playable demos, such as in the case of
	id's Spear of Destiny.)  Might also come handy for those
	curious about what DOS gaming was like back in the day, but
	unwilling to spend actual money on that.

	Of course, I appreciate fully free games just as well, such
	as OpenTTD, http://packages.debian.org/bookworm/openttd .
	Sure, /quantitatively,/ the simulation makes little sense
	(a bus to the suburbs taking a week or two for a trip around),
	yet /qualitatively,/ the game is surprisingly insightful.


	As to music, I've been relying on CDDA for bigger names (such
	as Iron Maiden), and http://magnatune.com/ and http://bandcamp.com/
	for not-so-big ones (and /lots/ of them in the first case, given
	that I've paid for my Magnatune lifetime membership back in 2011,
	and thus get any updates from there I want essentially for free.)

	Say, as I was starting to write this article, (a local copy
	of) this track was playing in the background:

  http://download.magnatune.com/all/03-Wires-One%20Sock%20Thief_nospeech.ogg
  (paywalled), http://he3.magnatune.com/all/03-Wires-One%20Sock%20Thief.mp3
  ("free as in free beer" copy with an ad.)

	As to free (as in "free software") and freeware (as in "free
	beer") music, I suppose I need to prepare a comprehensive
	list at some point, but an obvious possible choice is
	http://commons.wikimedia.org/ .  Somewhat less obvious IMO
	are http://imslp.org/ and http://opengameart.org/ .  Say, I've
	recently stumbled upon http://opengameart.org/content/arrival-1 ,
	and unless I miss some deep flaw in it, it feels on par with
	the works of http://sekondprime.bandcamp.com/ .  (Then again,
	it's not like I'm an expert music critic myself, so take that
	with a grain of salt.)


	For non-fiction, http://en.wikipedia.org/ IME provides a good
	enough summary for a sheer variety of topics that I've rarely
	felt a need to go for a proper textbook at all.  For things
	like programming languages, standards / manuals are often
	enough available (as in: downloadable) for free (e. g.,
	http://ecma-international.org/ ); and for the examples of
	actual usage, the existing corpus of free software /and/
	http://duckduckgo.com/ searches (that in this case tend to
	mostly point to the Stack Exchange pages these days) hardly
	leave any ground uncovered.

	When that's not enough (and that's /rare/ IME), I've been
	either buying a dead tree edition, asking a friend who has
	one, or going to a local library.

	For fiction, I've bought a few ebooks from http://kobo.com/ -
	though a caution is needed to read the fine print stating
	whether any particular item does or does not use DRM.  Mostly,
	though, I've been relying on http://wikisource.org/ (for the
	old, out-of-copyright works, such as those of H. P. Lovecraft),
	or the likes of http://fanfiction.net/ .  My recent pick there
	is the "Darth Vader: Hero of Naboo" novel.  Sure, it could use
	a proofreader or two (for comparison, I've only spotted a
	/single/ typo, 'quit' vs. 'quite', in my copy of "Princess Holy
	Aura" from Baen Books via Kobo), but I /am/ able to overlook
	minor spelling and grammar flaws and enjoy a good narrative still.

	Also, if you're into Russian language (or are asking for a
	friend), there's http://lib.ru/ .  Can't say I'm too familiar
	with the site myself, though.


	Yet another resource to mention is http://archive.org/ : it has
	books, music, newspapers, radio shows, video games, - pretty
	much anything.  Yet again, like with Kobo, some caution is needed
	as it /does/ include "streaming-only" content as well.

	One thing I barely mentioned are movies, and the reason is that
	I'm inclined to consider them a lost cause: some of the titles
	seem to have bigger budgets than some countries, at which point
	it as well might be seen as surprising that the stakeholders
	resort to merely uncivil behavior (such as DRM), rather than
	outright criminal (such as honest-to-goodness bloody murder.)

	Feel free to check http://gog.com/ and http://archive.org/ for
	DRM-free movies, but personally, I've decided for the time being
	to rely on written prose instead.  If anything, it makes up in
	variety what it lacks in visuals (and my imagination seems to
	do a better job covering holes in presentation rather than holes
	in the plot.)

	... And that'd be all for now.  Thoughts?