The Federal Trade Commission wants to know about DRM, and it's hosting a March conference on the topic. The agency looks set to get an earful—today is the final day to file public comments, and more than 700 individuals have already done so. Surprisingly, the main concerns in the comments don't appear to be about DVDs or protected music files but about video games. If FTC staff didn't know much about SecuRom, Spore, install limits, and activation codes before the conference, they will soon be experts on the topics.

The big players in these sorts of public hearings follow a predictable plan: they hold their filings until the final day for submissions, apparently out of a desire not to tip their hand to opponents and give them a chance to directly address their arguments. The strategy appears to be in play in the DRM proceeding, with only a fistful of corporate or think thank names appearing among the 700 current submissions.

The upside of this behavior is that it makes it simple to browse the comments and get a sense of what those without political clout think of the issue. And, when it comes to DRM, they don't have much good to say—our troll through 30 or 40 comments turned up only a couple that supported DRM. (Including this pithy submission: "The FTC has no place in a matter between private enterprise and public consumption. You are a blight on free speech and a waste of taxpayer dollars.")

While some comments were brief to the point of unhelpfulness ("NO DRM!") and some were filed by a 17-year old Dutch gamer and other non-US residents, most comments stand out for being relatively informed on the issues.

User comments are generally short and lack the polish of the "professional commenters," but they have a "man on the street" authenticity to them. Most make cases against DRM that we've all heard before: it limits buyers but not pirates, it turns content into something "licensed" and controlled rather than sold outright, it has been responsible for root kits, it doesn't work, etc. But such complaints gain their power from the sea of specific examples provided in the comments, brief stories of real people negatively impacted by DRM while attempting to perform legal activities.

My father... received a digital media player for his birthday, so he went and downloaded a track from the largest music sites—iTunes. However, his music player only supported WMA, so his money was wasted.

One commenter writes, for instance, about his father's attempt to buy music online. "The compatibility problems DRM can introduce have been readily apparent in the digital music market," he says. "People have been buying digital music players they call 'MP3 players' because the MP3 format popularized digital music. However, when they went to download digital music, they were almost invariably restricted to one of two formats: WMA and iTunes. No one device supported both formats, so some users who hadn't followed the market bought music they couldn't play. My father was one such consumer. He received a digital media player for his birthday, so he went and downloaded a track from the largest music sites—iTunes. However, his music player only supported WMA, so his money was wasted."

Florida's Mark Wolf was one of many (many!) people to offer their thoughts on DRM and gaming. "I've owned numerous PC game titles from EA and Ubisoft that use DRM such as SecuROM or StarForce," he writes. "Games I own are bought from brick-and-mortar retail outlets, or from online distributors such as Steam, Direct2Drive, or EA Link. On several occasions I've had to remove non-game applications, such as CD/DVD burning tools, DVD Region modification tools (since I am German and live in the US), virtual CD/DVD drives or simple CD/DVD Copying utilities, because I was having problems with games not starting after installation. I am unaware of any law that allows another program to dictate what I can and cannot have on my computer.

"The computer is my personal property, as are the applications that I install on them. I am an IT Director for a firm and understand there may be incompatibilities between applications and that issues can occur, but to blatantly have a GAME PUBLISHER ask a user to uninstall applications because they're been "blacklisted" by their chosen DRM, is totally absurd. The applications that I use are lawfully distributed and I apply them lawfully."

The FTC event will no doubt be interesting to watch (a webcast will be available for those not in the Seattle area). Discussion questions on the agenda include "What can be done, and by whom, to protect consumers or mitigate harm to them if content they purchase is protected by DRM systems that become archaic or obsolete?" and "Are DRM systems being designed in a way that will require consumers to purchase the same content multiple times?"

The event takes place on March 25 at the University of Washington Law School... in William H. Gates Hall. Ars will be there to cover it.