http://forbrukermakt.drmowinckel.com/

The site is in Norwegian, but it will be translated to English soon.

Basically, it's a campaign to stop the Copy Protection that's stopping people from playing the "CD"s in their car stereo and so on.

To sign up, click "Underskriv" (in the middle of the page).

Navn = Name
Epost = E-mail adress
vis epostadresse = show e-mail adress
epostadresse vil ikke bli utnyttet til spam = the e-mail adress will not be used for spam
(og adressen blir manipulert slik at de ikke blir fisket av spamroboter) = (and the adress will be manipulated so it won't be found by spamrobots)
Bosted = Where you live
Yrke = Occupation
Kommentar = Commentary
Underskriv = Sign up

Dette er teksten du underskriver på: = This is what you sign up for:

Jeg som forbruker nekter å være tilskuer til at plateselskapene selger produkter som ikke innfrir forbrukerens rettigheter. Kopisperren "Copy Controlled" hindrer forbrukeren i å ta berretigede kopier til eget bruk, og fungerer ikke i alle avspillere. Plater med kopisperre kan også ødelegge enkelte avspillere. Jeg viser derfor mitt standpunkt mot kopisperrer ved å boikotte plater merket "Copy Controlled".

=

I, as a consumer, deny to stand by and watch the record companies selling products that doesn't comply to the buyers rights. The CDs branded with "Copy Controlled" is stopping the consumer in making legal copies for own use, and doesn't work in all kinds of players. Records with copy protection may also destroy some kinds of players. I therefore take a stand against copy protection by boycotting records branded with "Copy Controlled".

I don't want to sound overly pessimistic, but do you really believe this petition will make any difference?

BTW: Nice nickname

Hehe, I have no idea. The petition isn't mine. The petition got some press in Norway, that's how I found it. The signups in Norway stalled after 5100, so they have decided to translate it to English and launch it internationally.

I decided to do some advertising for their site here, because I guess there's quite a lot of people here who are against copy protection.

Yeah, my nick is quite nice in this context

The problem is that the text of the petition is very weak.
With the presence of a software player and 48 kbps files, the players that can't read the disc are too few to bother them,so the argument will look pointless for them, and most protections don't harm any player. Actually, the only real cases were Mac computers getting frozen while trying to access a corrupted TOC.

Maybe it should be better to show them that they are buying protections (that must be expensive) that are useless.

i prefer to act instead of talking/signing petitions. After all, the record companies of course know very well that the consumer prefers non-copyprotected media. They do know this and decided that their priority is not the customer - not even playing fair to the customer. Signing petitions imho won't tell them anything they wouldn't know already.

Of course drops in sales will just be blamed by them on the customer ("They're all pirates!") because it cannot be that the fault is on their side - its always the others who have to be the culprit.

But honestly, i do not care at all - i have lost all trust and respect to large record companies. They're have shown in a dozen situations that they're just greedy liars who give a crap about the satisfaction, privacy, rights and respect for their customers AND contracted artists.

I therefore have stopped to buy ANY records from major record labels and any label which sells copy-protected CDs. And the funny thing, by switching over to indie labels and boycotting major labels i haven't lost something but instead gained very much: i now know about much more creative and higher-quality music and the amount of selection from which i can choose has not become narrower but instead it has become almost difficult to decide which great new record to buy. There is so much great music out there which is released on smaller indie-labels. Not to forget net-labels.

- Lyx

edit: instead of creating another one of those petition-sites, the energy would imho be much better spend by spreading the word that there is an alternative to major labels - that one does not "restrict" oneself by not riding on the major-label-wave but instead gains something by leaving the grap of the majors.
Websites which educate users about where to start looking for interesting indie-music, how to check if an album was released by the majors, answers to question which many major-label-junkies probably have, etc. etc. - Do something yourself instead of petitioning others to do something. Why wait or ask for a change if the alternative is already out there?

I second that.