Good evening folks. Today's whipping boy will be DRM (Digital Rights Management). I've spoken enough on the subject, so here I'll just add the more recent stories.
- "Microsoft Media Player shreds Your Rights"
- "How Copyright Broke"
- "Resisting the RIAA"
- "Film piracy: Is it theft?"
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"... new terminology, old idea, you are a wallet with legs waiting to be raped. "The store might limit the number of times that you can restore your rights or limit the number of computers on which can use the songs or videos that you obtain from them. Some stores do not permit you to restore media usage rights at all." Translation: not our problem, and get bent, we got your cash. "
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Copyright was like a tank-mine, designed only to go off when a publisher or record company or radio station rolled over it. We civilians couldn't infringe copyright.
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I once got into an argument with a senior Disney TV exec who truly believed that if you re-broadcasted an old program, it was automatically re-copyrighted and got another 95 years of exclusive use (that's wrong).
How stupid can these greedy bastards be?
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When it comes to retail customers for information goods — readers, listeners, watchers — this whole license abstraction falls flat. No one wants to believe that the book he's brought home is only partly his, and subject to the terms of a license set out on the flyleaf. You'd be a flaming jackass if you showed up at a con and insisted that your book may not be read aloud, nor photocopied in part and marked up for a writers' workshop, nor made the subject of a piece of fan-fiction.
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Have a look at the next click-through "agreement" you're provided with on purchasing a piece of software or an electronic book or song. The terms set out in those agreements are positively Dickensian in their marvelous idiocy. Sony BMG recently shipped over eight million music CDs with an "agreement" that bound its purchasers to destroy their music if they left the country or had a house-fire, and to promise not to listen to their tunes while at work.
Well, just read the links. They aren't long articles, but enough to give you food for thought.
By the way, on the infinitesemal chance that someone on the other side of the fence, so to speak, is reading this, consider the following:
Due to the nature of my jobs (plus my band), I reach more young, inquiring minds for free, that you need to spend millions of advertising dollars to target and hold their attention long enough for your hype to register. I have successfully made hundreds, if not thousands, aware of the issues surrounding DRM and the effect on our private liberties. I've steered the few willing to actually shell out money to buy your imported Content Cartel crap at obscene inflated prices away to alternative sources.
Boycotts work. You don't have far to look (the Sony rootkit "who cares?" fiasco, the starforce disaster, etc) to see that we will be heard. Creative media doesn't need you; your function as the middleman is no longer mandatory, nor desireable. Continue to engage in restrictive DRM practises at your own peril.