What is described in the following may be illegal where you live. Where I live, the law permits making a small number of copies of the contents of legally acquired media for personal use as long as this does not involve circumventing copy protection. Strangely enough, “personal use” includes giving a copy to close relatives. And “small number” certainly is well under double-digits, but to my knowledge the courts have not yet made it explicit. You didn’t expect the legislators – politicians! – to do that in the course of creating the legislation, did you?
Entertainment Industry: wiretap the net!
September 15, 2006 — KetoWarrior“The entertainment industry has proposed that ISPs should be forced by law to monitor all customers’ communications for copyright infringement, charging for anything that might be a copyrighted work.”
Stuff it in their analog hole, call the MPAA today
August 19, 2006 — KetoWarriorThe MPAA wants to plug the “analog hole”. Give top MPAA execs and their underlings an ear full today as part of the DefectiveByDesign.org call-in action “Freedom Rings at the MPAA”. The site is posting call reports all day, so you can read what other people had to say.
You can lobby but you can’t hide
August 17, 2006 — KetoWarriorStop DRM! Get ready for action against the executives at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) this Friday. The MPAA’s unrelenting lobbying has saddled us with the DMCA, and now threatens us with legislation mandating the Broadcast Flag and closure of the Analog Hole. DefectiveByDesign has the questions to ask and the numbers to call.
Join DefectiveByDesign at Linux World and Say No to DRM
August 12, 2006 — KetoWarriorLinuxworld is celebrating its 15th anniversary in San Francisco next week. Join the party and help send the message that technologists wont accept DRM. DefectiveByDesign folk are helping make this visual statement against DRM.
A Five Minute Guide to Opposing DRM
August 4, 2006 — KetoWarriorI’ve been covering the Free Software Foundation’s Defective By Designcampaign against Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies since its planning stages. Starting from scratch, in less than three months, the campaign has grown to 7000 members. This number is impressive.
RIAA and MPAA: ‘Piss on your infrastructure’
March 17, 2006 — KetoWarrior…and your life. This is the short of it when it comes to the long circuitous blather of MPAA and RIAA (aka “copyright owners”) attorneys. So reports Ed Felton of the Freedom to Tinker website:
One would have thought they’d make awfully sure that a DRM measure didn’t threaten critical infrastructure or endanger lives, before they deployed that measure. But apparently they want to keep open the option of deploying DRM even when there are severe doubts about whether it threatens critical infrastructure and potentially endangers lives.
Hollywood Cripples Your Hardware
March 8, 2006 — KetoWarriorArs Technica reports that “content providers” (ie. the music and movie industries) through pawns such as Intel are mandating crippleware for multimedia hardware such as DVD drives through licensing schemes that include $8 million (US) penalties for under-compliance.
Running a successful business is all about giving customers what they want at a price they can afford, but don’t tell this to copyright holders, who are pushing for even more control in the next generation of consumer devices. Intel, for instance, has introduced its next-generation link encryption technology called DTCP-IP, which protects content as it makes its way across unsecured IP networks—say, from your main computer to your media PC or television. At this week’s Intel Developer Forum, the company pushed manufacturers to adopt the technology, using what might be described as a “carrot and stick” approach, but without the carrot.
Important to note is that in addition to the fines by Intel, manufacturers can also have their devices “disabled in the field.” This means that say you buy an Acme DVD drive with DTCP-IP technology from Intel and Intel later determines that Acme’s implementation of DTCP-IP is not strict enough and results in “copyright infringement” then Intel can remotely disable all Acme DVD drives from accessing protected content. All of a sudden your DVD drive is worthless. This makes manufacturers vulnerable to lawsuits by angry consumers who had their drives disabled by Intel.
Boing-Boing’s Cory Doctorow writes:
It’s pretty creepy: you have to allow for “system renewability messages” that can revoke features and even disable the DTCP-IP when they’re submitted. Ever wonder why enemy space-stations always seem to have a big red “press this to make the whole space-station explode” button in science fiction movies? I mean, wouldn’t it be smarter to just not build “self-destruct” into your space-station? Well, that’s what DTCP-IP demands of its implementers.
Are consumers really supposed to swallow this poison pill with a smile? Is Hollywood’s hubris so vast that they actually believe consumers will allow them at their own caprice to permanently disable their computer hardware by remote control just so that we may be permitted to imbibe their crap movies and music? Apparently so but as I have told anyone who would listen, the only solution to this DRM mess is for consumers to assert their power by starving the beast. Nobody needs to watch movies or listen to copyrighted music. When their profits fall through the floor due to consumer boycott then “copyright owners” and their tech minions may finally stand up and take notice of the fact that you cannot make enemies and criminals of your customers and expect them to continue to patronize your business.
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