I'm a Canadian sysadmin. I love -- LOVE -- the LISA conference (http://www.usenix.org/lisa11/). It's wonderful, informative, and fun; I've made great friends there, learned an incredible amount and generally enjoyed myself enormously.

Last year was the third time I went. The conference was in San Jose. I took a bus and a train -- which took over 24 hours -- from Vancouver to San Jose, rather than fly and go through a naked body scanner. I figured if I'm going to talk the talk, I should walk the walk.

I'd already decided to skip this year's conference; it's in Boston, which is a long way to go by train or bus. I didn't want to be away from my family for that long. But I had been thinking about going next year, when it's going to be in San Diego.

I'm not going now. Not if this crap keeps up. I'll watch the video on my workstation, I'll listen to the MP3s on the bus, and I'll stay here in Canada. We have problems of our own -- but random searches and "papers, please" for the crime of taking the goddamned train are not one of them.

I'll miss y'all.

Still, I can't help but think: digital rights management, sure! Where are my rights, as a consumer, and who is managing them?"

And that is why the Free Software Foundation insists on calling this technology "Digital Restrictions Management (http://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm): it points out that this is meant to keep YOU, the paying customer, from doing useful things with the stuff you buy.