DRM ain’t bad. Dumb DRM is bad. STUPID Yahoo! is going to fuck over all their customers and give people another reason to rally against DRM.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/07/yahoo-shutterin.html
So easy for them to have handled this right. Not sure why they couldn’t just transfer a user’s licenses over to the Rhapsody account they are getting. I love Rhapsody. Seriously.
Yahoo Fucks It Up for DRMReuters reportS: Canadians will be allowed to copy legally acquired music to their iPods and computers but would be banned from getting around any digital locks that companies might apply.
Legislation protects Internet service providers from liability for copyright violations by their subscribers, requiring them only to pass on notices of violations.
University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist complains “All these rights force consumers to read the fine print — you can shift a song or a television show, but once it’s locked down, your rights disappear and your potential liability skyrockets.”
Awwww…..they’d have to readi the fine print. Hey, read the f’in fine print and keep your ass out of jail.
Legislation doesn’t specify how the government would monitor whether people had built up personal libraries of recordings. Liberal Party member Dan McTeague criticized the bill as being incomplete. “How are you going to enforce this when existing jurisprudence doesn’t allow you to walk into someone’s home?” he pointed out.
Looks like business as usual for digital rights legislation. They just don’t get it.
Canada Clarifies CopyrightsThe video of a 13-month old dancing to a Prince tune – 13 months, not a teenager – has opened the debate once again on what constitutes “Fair Use,” Mediapost reports.
Prince has been notorious for protecting his copyrights, but this is one video that couldn’t be a clearer example of when to leave well enough alone.
Whats your call?
Prince Snippet Stirs Fair Use DebateThe Recording Industry Association of America has sued music search engine Project Playlist, claiming that the service infringes copyright by making it easy for users to find and play pirated tracks.
The company does not host files on its site, but rather provides a player that can be embedded on social networking sites.
RIAA Sues Project PlaylistMore details to emerge, I’m sure, but this time DVD Jon, known for cracking the DVD copyright encryption, has cracked Apple’s DRM, enabling people to play their iTunes purchased music on non-Apple devices. San Francisco-based doubleTwist, co-founded by DVD Jon, is releasing the software.
Beyond computer-to-computer media-sharing, doubleTwist lets users synchronize media sitting on their computers to mobile devices they or their friends own, simply by “dragging and dropping” media files into a desktop folder that then drops copies of the media files onto the mobile devices over the Web.
This is similar functionality provided by Red Chair Software’s Anapod, which the Hobo’s Mom uses for dragging and dropping to her iPod. It also seems to mimic the functionality of Tunebite, which plays back songs in fast forward and re-records them as unprotected files.
While there appears to be little hope for DRM when users are determined to get around it, I still maintain that there is very little that people can’t do under “Fair Use” with DRM protected files.
DVD Jon Liberates Tunes from iTunesCheck out The Hobo arguing FOR DRM on Mediapost.
The Hobo Argues for DRM on MediapostSlysoft, makers of the popular DVD copying software AnyDVD and CloneDVD, has added a new layer of artificial intelligence to AnyDVD to ‘futureproof’ the software from future copyright protection technologies.
AnyDVD is used for removing DRM and CSS copyright protections. CloneDVD is used for the actual copying of the disc, compressing video to fit one disc, and removing menus, alternate languages and other elements of a DVD that a user may not want to keep in an archived copy of a movie.
Slysoft Adds AI to AnyDVDAccording to Wired’s Elliot Van Buskirk, SoundExchange will not enforce the new online radio royalty rates when they officially kick in this weekend.
Read more at Wired’d blog.
SoundExchange’s Sound DecisionAccording to DVD Jon’s blog, So Sue Me, the world’s most famous code cracker has done it again, this time liberating the iPhone from AT&T’s activation process.
The iPhone’s iPod and Wifi features work without activating the phone service. The question, though, is why would you want to? Suddenly seems like a very expensive 4gb or 8gb iPod.
Despite being an Apple hater, the Hobo was quite surprised to see that the iPhone’s music navigation system did work exactly like it looks on the commercials. I’m still not buying one, though.
DVD Jon Liberates the iPhoneForbes blogger David Ewalt thinks so. In a recent blog post, he called the studios’ efforts to protect their content “useless and annoying” at best.
I simply don’t think David is right. First, just like in the Viacom vs Google suit, copyright holders have a right to protect their content. Second, despite losing money to the pirates, their efforts really aren’t that annoying, especially when you consider the scope of the problem. So you have to watch a promo for the MPAA’s anti-piracy efforts along with the other stupid trailers that you don’t really want to watch either. So what?
Finding solutions that get around that annoyance – among others – is a quick search away. Like with most hot-button issues, people like to gripe, but aren’t going to put much effort behind it. There’s too many DVD copying suites out there for anyone to be all that disgruntled about it. Companies like Slysoft are quite clear about what their software can do.
That said, he did find this hysterical article on DVD-sniffing dogs. So thanks, David!