Last week I was invited to talk at the Unitec University in Monterrey about DRM and copyright, of course, applied to mexican law. Which is interesting since the mexican law allows for people to have a copy of a work for personal use only. This means P2P and basically all forms of file sharing are allowed.
This is the first time I talk about this topic. Even though I’m very passionate about it, I think I still need to learn a lot on how to deliver the right and complete message. Fortunately I recorded the whole chat on video (video coming soon) and will improve for next time. On the good side, everything got cleared up during the audience questions.
The public’s reaction was interesting. A lot of people there were surprised when I mentioned GNU/Linux and open source software. Others, for some strange and bizarre reason, insisted on me giving them advice on antivirus software and providing them with serial numbers for their software. No, I never mentioned or endorsed the use of unofficial (or cracked) serial numbers for their software. I don’t know where this guy got this idea from me.
But it keeps surprising me the fact that, every time I talk about software freedom, there’s a lot of people that didn’t have a clue that they have a choice.
2 replies on “DRM chat at Unitec Monterrey”
Don’t take me wrong, but the people at private colleges aren’t always the smartest crowd. Not considering that, I believe people tend to confuse open software with piracy. Even more, they don’t usually have a clue of what GNU/Linux is about. I have this friend who got started on Ubuntu and had this guy trying to impress her by telling her that “he was a real master using linux”. He lent her a thick book (i presume a Linux Bible) but when she asked him about something as simple as editing the grub file, the guy just was perplexed. I haven’t finished reading my “Introducción a Unix” and I believe I move around the console much better than that fake.
[…] few weeks ago I posted about me giving a talk at Unitec Monterrey about DRM and mexican copyright law titled: “DRM: ¿derechos o restricciones?”. […]