Archive for the ‘DRM’ Category

YouTube Tests Antipiracy System

Tuesday, October 16th, 2007

As reported by (a billion news sources including) PC World, Google unit YouTube is beta testing an automated copyright management system. The official Google Blog describes the tool, "Video Identification," as part and parcel with a number of copyright enforcement tools. Google also (correctly, in my non-lawyerly opinion) argues that this ...

Can Rick Rubin Save the Music Industry?

Sunday, September 2nd, 2007

In this weekend's New York Times Magazine, an excellent profile of music mogul Rick Rubin suggests Sony's recent hiring of Rubin as Columbia Records co-head just might save both the company and the music industry. Rubin certainly seems bent on changing the music industry. He sounds like a Free Culture activist, ...

George Hotz Shouldn’t, Probably Won’t Patent iPhone Hack

Saturday, August 25th, 2007

On George Hotz's blog, many commenters are urging him to patent his iPhone hack. This just misses the point. Hotz is sad that, when he starts at RIT this fall, folks with more spare time will capitalize on his discovery. But he's not sad that all this hacking will go on ...

FCC Commissioners Admit Broadcast Flag Mistake

Friday, August 10th, 2007

There are often times when I wish I had my trusty digital voice recorder—the one that sent Senator Ted Stevens’ “series of tubes” anti-net neutrality speech into the Internet Meme Hall of Fame. Yesterday afternoon at the annual convention for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, the ...

Congress threatens colleges in hear-o-mercial for filtering tech

Thursday, June 7th, 2007

Tina and I are now back from our honeymoon trip to Italy and Greece. And so are the copyright absolutists, who were again rattling their swords at colleges' IT departments this week. On Tuesday, there was yet another congressional hearing filled with cries of rampant infringement via campus networks. These have ...

“Desperate company” makes bizarre DMCA threats

Monday, May 14th, 2007

Using a very creative interpretation of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Media Rights Technologies (MRT) has issued a cease-and-decist notice to Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and RealNetworks. Their alleged violation of the law? Failing to use MRT's digital rights management technology as a means of retarding copyright infringement. (Note that each ...

Framing the Digg story: Free speech triumph or mob rule?

Saturday, May 5th, 2007

In my last post about the Digg/HD-DVD hack story, I fretted that the take-away lesson from the Digg story would be that Web 2.0 is just too hot to handle. The mainstream media is generally framing it this way, but the tech news world is mostly framing it as a ...

Digg users bury site

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007

After attempting to stifle repeated postings of a crack for the DRM on HD-DVDs, the user-edited site Digg.com has caved to a user revolt, allowing users to post the information, exposing the site to substantial legal liability. The Lede (a Times blog about the news) has an excellent summary of the ...

EMI to offer DRM-free iTunes downloads

Monday, April 2nd, 2007

Customers of iTunes will soon be able to download DRM-free songs, EMI announced today. The new DRM-free tracks will cost $1.29, instead of the $.99 standard fee for tracks encumbered by Apple's FairPlay DRM scheme. As an added bonus, the audio quality will double from 128 to 256 kilobits per second. ...

Congress flunks P2P test

Friday, March 30th, 2007

As commentator Roy Mark argues, Congress is totally clueless in its attempts to deal with internet-based infringement. Mark notes the quixotically conceived attempts to bribe and/or threaten colleges into magically preventing all on-campus infringement. Representatives such as Howard Berman (D-CA) are foolishly listening to copyright industry lobbyists as they blame colleges ...