Soon-to-be-gone MPAA boss Dan Glickman says the anti-piracy effort is “the option” for people “to enjoy movies in a more timely fashion”.

“If the FCC agrees, the MPAA and the movie studios it represents (Paramount, Sony, Fox, Universal, Disney, and Warner Brothers) would be able to ‘turn off’ any output plug they choose, like those on the back of consumer electronics devices of an entertainment system, during special video-on-demand movies on cable television,” said Public Knowledge last year.

Not only but also, if you use a TiVo, any Slingbox, or a TV manufactured before 2004; connect your TV to your cable box with analog cables (either component or composite); or, have a TV without a digital connection, such as HDMI, you’ll probaby have to replace much if not all of your existing entertainment system, it said.

Nor are consumers the only ones under threat.

There’s “no definition of  ‘a more timely fashion’ — something that theater owners have demanded,” says IMDb, going on:

As of now films are not made available for home viewing until four months after their theatrical run. And, in an interview with today’s (Thursday) Los Angeles Times, John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners, said that while his group doesn’t oppose the use of Soc, he objects to the fact that the MPAA isn’t “telling the FCC or anyone else how early they want to go, so there’s no way of telling what the impact is on the cinema industry and our consumers.”

But, it adds, “industry analysts have observed that the barn door was already unlocked by peer-to-peer technology, which has made bootlegged versions of movies available online at about the same time they are released in theaters — or even earlier.”

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Soon-to-be-gone – MPAA boss pressures UK on 3 strikes scheme, October 26, 2009
IMDb – MPAA Asks FCC For Permission To Launch New Technology, November 5, 2009

Anything which can be seen or heard can be copied by one means or another.

And Henrik Andersen was so tired of Denmark’s  intellectual property laws he turned himself into local cops and admitted copying 100 movies and 10 seasons of a TV series.

But he hadn’t downloaded them.

He’d bought them

Nor was he confessing for copying them — doing so for personal use is legal in Denmark.

Rather, he was owning up to having broken DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) consumer control technology, which is against the law, there, says BusinessDK, noting the ministry of culture had intended to update local laws regarding  “copy protection” to enable people to make copies for personal use.

Says TorrentFreak, “However, as Henrik points out, while this might be the government’s plan, the movie industry has failed to live up to this vision, hence his intended piracy martyrdom to draw attention to the issue.

“As the culture minister sees no reason to change the law, she must, in my opinion, not understand the problem, therefore I choose to confess to you, to see whether you are prepared to get the legislation tested in court,” says Henrik as he concludes his confession.

Henrik has given anti-pirate outfit Antipiratgruppen until December 1to respond,” it says, adding:

“Even given a prosecution on a plate, it’s extremely unlikely they will take him up on his offer.”

(Cheers, Lars)

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

BusinessDK – Dansker har meldt sig selv for piratkopiering, November 4, 2009
TorrentFreak - DRM Breaker Reports Himself To Anti-Piracy Group, November 4, 2009

It wants to convince “music and film footage rights owners to make advertising revenue from their content rather than remove it from the video-sharing site for breach of copyright,” says the Guardian.

And it hopes to do that with ContentID, a “fingerprinting system for rights holders that means YouTube can identify their material even when it has been altered and made part of user-generated content such as wedding videos or satirical clips”.

With it, Google’s computers compare all the material uploaded to YouTube – around 20 hours every minute – against “ID files” from a 100,000-hour library of reference material from the rights holders,” says the story, going on »»»

The system creates reports of what is viewed where and how often.

Rights holders then have the choice to either block their content or make money from it. That means putting advertising alongside the video and sharing the revenues with YouTube, which takes a small cut. They can also make money by linking to sites selling DVDs, downloads and CDs of the original content.

Three years after Google bought the site for $1.65bn, “it has yet to turn a profit and there are concerns the division is devouring the internet group’s cash reserves,” says the Guardian, going on:

“Analysts say the company has struggled to sell online advertising against YouTube’s eclectic content and they estimate that it is losing Google at least $175m a year as a result. Less conservative estimates suggest the figure could be as high as $470m.”

YouTube says it streams seven billin videos a week, nut, “only 1bn of those are monetised”, says the story, adding:

“Of those 1bn, a third make money through the ContentID system.”

The dilemma must be driving Gargle marketing bosses insane.

Like Fa$ebook, GooTube claims to be a service, and that’s the way users use it instead of flocking / clicking in droves, damnit it!

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Guardian – Google seeks to turn a profit from YouTube copyright clashes, November 1, 2009

That’s always assuming they’re in any danger in the first place,  of course.

Microsoft has won a US patent for a distributed DRM system which works over peer-to-peer networks, using encrypted public and private keys as the licensing mechanism, says InformationWeek.

With it, P2P networks could, “reemerge as viable, albeit protected, content sources,” says the story.

Granted yesterday, but filed six years ago, the patent 7,594,275 abstract reads

A public licensing infrastructure (PLI) for a digital rights management (DRM) system is described. In an implementation, a method includes generating a formal license for content. The formal license includes a decryption key for decrypting the content and access rules for accessing the content. A plurality of license authorities is configured to provide a plurality of partial licenses. The plurality of partial licenses is combinable to form the formal license. Each license authority provides a respective partial license.

On the one hand, the story goes on, “the RIAA’s aggressive legal pursuit of song-downloading grandmas squandered the precious little sympathy the record companies might have had. But at the same time, the marketplace essentially moved beyond DRM. Consumers became more sophisticated, and most slowly became inured to the idea they should pay for their music.”

But it wasn’t so much that the market moved beyond DRM, was it? Rather, Digital Restrictions Management never had a chance in the first place because put simply, anything which can be seen or heard can be copied.

Period.

Anyway, “a time when peer-to-peer networks reemerge from their current sub-rosa position and become popular, brand, public-facing methods of distributing content”  could be on its way, says InformationWeek. And, “When they do, Microsoft may be positioned to reap some serious royalties.”

Here’s how Microsoft describes the peer-to-peer distributed angle, in the “background” section of the patent:

In a conventional DRM system, license acquisition requests are processed by a centralized license server. This makes the centralized license server heavy-loaded, complex, and expensive to run and maintain, and makes it a weak link in the DRM system. For example, failure of the centralized license server may disrupt normal DRM services. Additionally, small content providers, such as a peer in a peer-to-peer network, may not be able to afford the cost of providing and/or utilizing the services of the centralized license server.

Peer-to-peer networks have emerged as a popular way to share large amounts of data, such as by peers downloading songs that are referenced as being available for download through a peer-to-peer website. Most peer-to-peer networks, however, do not have digital rights management or access control. Consequently, peer-to-peer networks can be liable for contributing to the infringement of the copyright in works that are referenced as being available for download by the peer-to-peer networks.

Accordingly, “there is a continuing need for a distributed public licensing infrastructure for digital rights management systems,” it adds.

As surfer once summed it p,  DRM Doesn’t Really Matter  and on top of that, it’s Dumb, Really Moronic.

And as Sony boss Howard Stringer, who’s never been able to live down the rootkit spyware scandal, has regretfully admitted, DRM was a big mistake —- “We can no longer say that we’re right and our customers are wrong.”

No need to stay tuned.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

InformationWeek – Microsoft DRM Patent Could Revive Peer-to-Peer Music Nets, September 22, 2009
Dumb, Really Moronic – DRM is Dead, Part Duex, July 21, 2009
big mistake – DRM a big mistake, admits Sony boss, May 14, 2009

D – E – A – D  dead!

But they never stop trying, ‘they’  being the various corporate content owners.

It’s dead simple: if you can see or hear something, you can copy it in any number of ways, analog and/or digital.

But they never learn and now the beeb admits it is under fire for wanting to encrypt Freeview HD data.

“Under plans submitted to regulator Ofcom, the broadcaster has requested that it be allowed to encrypt certain information on set top boxes,” says the BBC, going on that only “trusted manufacturers” would be offered the decryption keys.

But opponents say the move would, “limit consumer choice,” the story states, continuing

The BBC argues it will prevent piracy.

The BBC said it made the request to Ofcom in response to pressure from rights holders to offer copy protection on all its high-definition broadcasts.

Under licensing rules, the BBC is not allowed to encrypt the actual video or audio streams.

So instead it is requesting that it be allowed to encrypt the data associated with TV listings without which set-top boxes are not able to decode the TV content.

“We are committed to ensuring that public service content remains free to air i.e. unencrypted.

“However, HD content holders have begun to expect a degree of content management on the Freeview HD platform and therefore broadcasters have recognised that a form of copy protection is needed,” read a statement from the BBC.

But, “Critics of the BBC’s request say that open source licenses are incompatible with the regulations because DRM locks down software so that it cannot be altered by the user,” it says. “As a result, it would be harder for manufacturers which use open source software to obtain the necessary permissions from the BBC, effectively pushing them out of the market.”

The deadline for responses to the proposal closed today and,  “Ofcom will then consider its response,” Aunty adds.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

BBC – BBC looks to copy protect content, September 16, 2009

Crosbie said: “Rights cannot be sold. They can be suspended by the government (in creating the privilege of a monopoly), but no-one should have to pay for their restoration. Artists can sell their work, but they shouldn’t sell their privileges — they should simply neutralise them.”

But IMO, there are a few problems with that scenario:

Most people — even creative artists and software designers — don’t understand the history or stated purpose of things like copyright and patents.

They don’t understand the importance of the Public Domain, and often times — like Sonny Bono — are likely to think of so-called “Intellectual” property as analagous to PHYSICAL property, in which case they’ll view the expiration of copyright as a form of expropriation.

We can thank years of corporate-funded misinformation campaigns, and a general lack of historical consciousness, for this state of affairs, but that doesn’t stop it from being horribly annoying at best — and outright dangerous at worst.

Such ignorance becomes dangerous  when it leads “small fish” (unsigned musicians, smaller software designers, relatively-unknown authors, etc) into supporting the Status Quo, simply because they believe supporting the RIAA or its equivalent is actually a way to safeguard what they’ve been trained to believe are their ‘rights’ (as opposed to mere privileges of limited duration and scope.)

I came up against this first-hand when “Sam I Am” mentioned how he hated the RIAA as much as we did because they ‘extorted’ him every time he wanted to use some of ‘their’ music for one of his fashion-shows, but he’d support their actions anyway, because the expiration of copyright-term would ostensibly ‘take’ something from his daughter.

Sam is basically a troll who goes around spamming various p2p/copyright-reform related message boards with recycled RIAA talking points, and leaving trolls aside, how exactly does one counter years of disinformation, and also soothe the inevitable fear of change that these issues bring up?

Another difficulty is: most folks are still at least implicitly wedded to business-models involving the sale of copies.  Never mind the fact that this doesn’t (and can’t) translate to the idea of selling digital copies (with total fidelity, the distinction between ‘originals’ and ‘copies’ vanishes.)

Never mind that digital copies essentially ‘cost’ nothing to produce — a few keystrokes, maybe?  Given the fact making digital copies is just so damn easy, why would anybody bother to pay for particular copies?

It’s not that the ‘content’ embodied in the various digital copies lacks “value”, so much as it lacks any justifiable ‘price’.

The copy cost essentially $0 to make, so any price you assign — even 1 cent — inevitably ends up looking like a really drastic markup that nobody much sees a point in paying.

Digital media are just so damned easy to copy

Back in the analog era, people didn’t have these kinds of problems because third or fourth generation copies were pretty degraded and unusable. But as I said before, in the digital domain, ‘copies’ are exactly like ‘originals’, such that thousandth-generation ‘copy’ would (in principle) retain total fidelity to the original.  (Barring, of course, damage to any of the copies in between.)

Enter DRM — making digital media ‘imitate’ analog media, such that a particular digital ‘copy’ is ‘welded’ to a particular physical  location.  This is extremely clunky, and — rightly — pisses everybody off.  It limits interoperability, portability, and basically only ‘duplicates’ the cumbersome disadvantages of analog media while lacking even the portability of being able to play an analog cassette-tape on multiple machines.

Nobody likes DRM — at least, nobody in their right mind.

Now, it would be nice to believe people will just ‘neutralise’ their monopoly privileges when confronted with the real history of copyright/patents, and the nature of digital media itself, but it’s exceedingly unlikely for several reasons:

Nina Paley nails one of the least respectable reasons in an article over on http://www.questioncopyright.org:

As she says:

“This may be hard to hear, but: many artists who claim they just want to eat and pay rent are lying (perhaps to themselves). Most artists don’t want a living wage — they want to win the lottery. Suggest to most filmmakers and musicians that “success” is about $75,000 a year, and they’ll turn up their noses. You call that a jackpot? They’re only in it for the millions, baby. If that means working a day job and remaining obscure, so be it. Millions need to be poor so that one can be rich; they’re willing to do their time being poor, so that one day they can be rich at the expense of others. Their turn will come, they think.”

http://questioncopyright.org/compensation

This is especially ironic when ’small fish’ get on board the RIAA’s copyright-fascism train: too many of them still cherish fantasies of being the next Nickelback, Amy Winehouse, or Microsoft.

That’s where www.sellyourrights.com is such a good idea:

1. It reassures folks who think that, absent the monopoly privileges of copyright and patent, they won’t get paid, that, yes, people do actually value their effort.

2. The use of Creative-commons licences (as opposed to straight-out ceding to the Public Domain) allows people to still impose conditions (noderivs, noncommercial, etc.) which allows them to retain a sense of ‘creative control’ which, if their stuff just went public domain, they wouldn’t retain.

3. It ‘incentivizes’ the use of Creative Commons licenses, making them more attrractive to folks outside the percieved “utopian’ free culture/copyright reform movement.  (Like it or not, even questioning stuff like copyright — much less advocating reform/repeal, strikes many as ‘utopian.’)

Don’t get me wrong here: the emerging ‘participatory culture’ vibe will only increase over time, eventually becoming the new ‘norm’ against which people’s actions are judged.  In twenty or thirty years, copyright fetishists will — rightly — be viewed as ‘hoarders’, and their stuff won’t be propagated throught he info-sphere with anything approaching the success of those who want their stuff to spread.

By that point, the idea of selling digital copies will also be viewed as self-evidently absurd, and people will barely be able to understand  the p2p/copyright-reform debates going on today.

But we’re not there yet, folks.

http://www.sellyourrights.com and other similar ideas strike me as a great way to ease the transition.

We’re right in the middle of a Thomas Kuhn-style ‘paradigm shift’, and the more ways we can ease the transition, the better.

Henry Emrich – p2pnet
[Emrich says he's, "just some guy," sometime musician, wannabe writer, sporadic blogger, and (hopefully) good-natured person.  He and his wife live in Pennsylvania with two cats, and, "entirely too many record albums".]

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September, 2009

The statement came from the EFF’s Fred von Lohman, commenting on the ruling, which says RealNetworks can’t sell its $30 RealDVD, created to allow consumers to make copies of DVDs they paid good money for.

“Although free DVD ripping software is readily available online, Real raised the hackles of Hollywood executives in 2008 because it paid for a license to the DVD Copy Control Association, believing that it could be interpreted to allow the services they wanted to provide,” says The Guardian, going on »»»

In her ruling, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel said that the complex meant that it was not illegal for consumers to copy their own DVDs – just illegal to produce a program that allowed them to do so.

“While it may well be fair use for an individual consumer to store a backup copy of a personally-owned DVD on that individual’s computer, a federal law has nonetheless made it illegal to manufacture or traffic in a device or tool that permits a consumer to make such copies.”

The case was brought by the Motion Picture Association of America – the consortium representing Hollywood studios that has become notoriously litigious in the face of unauthorised downloading and online file sharing.

Von Lohmann is quoted as saying he expects Real to appeal the ruling.

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$30 RealDVD – RealNetworks ’surprised’ by MPAA lawsuit, March 24, 2009
The Guardian – Judge rules that DVD copying software is illegal, August 12, 2009

“We reject the view,” the story quotes him as saying in a letter to the office, “that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works. No other product or service providers are held to such lofty standards. No one expects computers or other electronics devices to work properly in perpetuity, and there is no reason that any particular mode of distributing copyrighted works should be required to do so.”

Like so many of the things to do with the entertainment industry, it’s a complete waste of time and money for everyone involved — except the lawyers, of course — because consumer control through Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) is a dead horse.

“But the entertainment and software cartels keep on beating it,” p2pnet posted almost exactly a year back, going on, “Anything which can be seen or heard can be copied by one means or another.

“Full stop.”

However, “DRM is still alive and well on streaming music and most video streams and downloads,” says the Ars story. “Metalitz doesn’t want his clients to face a situation where decryption tools can be produced under the proposed exemption, then widely distributed. How could such decryption tools be limited to those who have actually suffered from authentication servers going dark, he wonders?

“But the Copyright Office indicated that it may grant the exemption, asking Metalitz and other respondents to “assume that” the case has been made. Metalitz declined to assume this, writing that ‘we cannot accept this invitation to assume that the Register [of Copyright] will recommend that the Librarian [of Congress] violate his statutory duty by recognizing Exemption 10B’.”

‘MP3s dusted with a dash of obfuscation’

The p2pnet story cited above centres on thoughts from the EFF’s (Flectronic Frontier Foundation) Fred von Lohmann on the music end of things.

Two leading on-demand streaming sites, iMeem and LaLa, aren’t using DRM on their audio streams, “instead sending the music as MP3s dusted with a dash of obfuscation,” says Fred, continuing »»»

This is significant because both sites have been licensed by all the major record labels — the very same record labels that were just last year pushing Congress to require DRM on all noninteractive webcasts. So it looks like the RIAA companies have changed their minds, dropping DRM requirements for the on-demand streaming music services.

This should put an end to legislation to mandate DRM on noninteractive webcasters. After all, why should these webcasters be in a worse position than the free, on-demand music services like LaLa and iMeem?

This also undermines the argument that DRM for music is necessary for subscription services. If the major labels have given up DRM for free, ad-supported, on-demand streaming services like LaLa and iMeem, there’s no plausible reason to insist on DRM for paid subscription services like Rhapsody and Napster 2.0. After all, there’s no reason to think that those who prefer commercial-free subscriptions like Rhapsody are more likely to “pirate” streams than those who prefer ad-supported services like LaLa.

LaLa and iMeem each take slightly different approaches to streaming music. LaLa uses HTTP to download each requested song as an MP3 to your browser, but relies on aggressive “no-cache” headers and pre-expired date stamps to suggest that your browser not make a copy of the file on your hard drive. Using a packet sniffer to capture the entire HTTP session, however, easily reveals the complete MP3 embedded right after the HTTP headers.

iMeem also downloads and caches each requested song, but sends the MP3 as the audio track of a Flash Video file. This FLV file is typically saved (cached) on your hard drive as an obscurely named temporary file, which is overwritten when you request your next song (we mentioned iMeem’s approach back in January, and it’s essentially unchanged). Copy this temp file, however, and you can easily extract the audio track from the Flash video, saving it as a stand-alone MP3 file.

(The location of this TemporaryItems folder, and its equivalent on other operating systems, varies significantly depending on operating system and version. On some operating systems it’s buried deep within the directory hierarchy, but it can be found automatically with standard tools.)

While the light obfuscation used by iMeem and LaLa might create a “speed bump” of inconvenience for users who want to keep the MP3 files, it doesn’t rise to the level of a “technical protection measure” protected by the DMCA. In short, this is yet another example of why there is no legitimate business case for DRM on music — it doesn’t prevent piracy and it’s not necessary to enable “new business models” like subscription or ad-supported music. (Of course, as the movie industry has demonstrated, DRM can still be valuable for impeding competition and putting the brakes on disruptive innovation. But it’s hard to see how the law should protect those goals.)

Stay tuned.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Ars Technica – Big Content: ludicrous to expect DRMed music to work forever, July 29, 2009
p2pnet – DRM for streaming: d-e-a-d dead, August 18, 2008
EFF – DRM for Streaming Music Dies a Quiet Death, August 15, 2008

“DRM is dead, isn’t it?” Lamy said, referring to the DRM-less iTunes store and other online outfits that now offer music without restrictions.”

Since the inception of DRM, it has the primary result of punishing those that have bought digital music, tying them down to either the device, or protocol that was the proprietary platform for the music played.

It has done nothing to inhibit the illicit file sharing of music as a whole, and really only had the effect of pissing off the customer. With the unstated pre-disposition that the customer was a criminal, hell bent on vicariously devastating the Big 4.

After incessant support for an unwanted ‘addition’ to digital music sales, and the many alphabet soup supporting industries, collection agencies and royalty boards touting its immense customer support and acceptance, constantly angling the invasive ‘add-on’ in the customer’s best interests, it seems that they are finally getting the point.

Even the RIAA touted its comeback less than a year ago, it seems the consumers have spoken. Not in the sense that the Big $ engaged the consumer to ask what they wanted, it seems that DRM was seriously hurting sales, and in the end, consumers have spoken with their almighty dollar.

One by one, beginning with iTunes, the retail outlets that offer music as digital sales have been dropping DRM, and then seeing their sales improve.

This is a perfect example of how powerful the internet is, and that determination from the customer will have an effect of corporate parasites.

Keep the Boycott going…

Update..
Mitch ‘The Don’ Bainwol SWEARS, the RIAA was misquoted. But does point to the undenying fact that removing DRM improves sales.

surfer
Share The Wealth!

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Slashdot – RIAA Spokesman Says DRM Is Dead, July 20, 2009

A new technology has caught the eye of the Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA). And it could eliminate the entertainment industry’s perceived need for back-end DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) consumer control.

Instead, DRM would be achieved at the front end.

“The Entertainment Merchants Association has just released a study showing that a new ‘point of sale activation’ technology could increase media sales by as much as six billion and reduce costs by up to $800 million,” says DigitalBattle, going on:

“If this technology is put into play, anyone who nabs a disc and sneaks out of a store will get home to find that their game, movie or cd isn’t anything other than a fancy coaster. In order to get a working product you’ll have to have the disc activated by the staff behind the counter. The EMA is now looking into the cost of deploying this technology which, if cost-effective could be in retailers by late 2010.”

It doesn’t say if the disc is copyable for legitimate back-up purposes, or whether ‘point of sale activation’ affects its playability in any  context.

UPDATE:- “This is NOT about DRM or other software activagtion [sic] of the discs,” says the EMA’s Sean Bersell in a comment post, adding:

“The technology to which we are referring would be a physical lock that is opened at the point of sale via radio frequency at the point of sale. (Think of a key card that unlocks a door.) And this is not about fighting piracy (illegal reproductions), but rather fighting shrink (theft of legitimate goods). The purpose is to make it easier for the consumer to purchase the product and enable additional retail channels that have significant shrink issues to carry the product.”

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(Cheers, Sukasa)

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

DigitalBattle – Disc Theft Deterrent Technology To Boost Sales Up To $6 Billion, June 23, 2009

Under new ownership, “The Napster subscription service introduced a new pricing tier that allows users to stream an unlimited number of songs and download five DRM-free tracks a month for $5,” says Billboard.

“The offer does not require subscribers to download the Napster client, but rather can be streamed from any Internet-connected device, such as computers and WiFi stereos and receivers.”

Wow! What a cool and original idea! Wonder why no on else has thought of it?

In much the same way $1 has been universally accepted as the grossly unreal standard price for corporate music downloads, $5 seems to be the number everyone but the people expected to pay it agree is okay for unlimited listening — but not owning, sharing or downloading.

For example, it’s the price touted by Warner’s Choruss, on one side of the fence, and the EFF on the other.

Meanwhile, “In addition, the company will sell prepaid cards redeemable for the monthly service in Best Buy stores,” says Billboard, observing Best Buy “acquired the Napster service last October”.

Best Buy employees will also try to, “upsell customers who purchase Internet-connected devices on the new Napster plan,” the story has Napster COO Christopher Allen stating.

“Napster will still retain the Napster To Go portable subscription for $15 a month, which relies on Windows DRM devices …”

They just never learn, do they?

No need to stay tuned.

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‘licensing’ scheme – Warner Music’s Choruss, revisited, May 18, 2009
deeply troubled Napster – Napster: worth more dead than alive, July 21, 2008
Billboard – Napster Introduces $5 Unlimited Stream, Five Download Tier, May 18, 2009

“We can no longer say that we’re right and our customers are wrong”, he’s confessed.

But this wasn’t an attempt by one of the members of the Big 4 organised music gang, the others being Vivendi Universal, EMI and Warner Music, to sort things out: to admit it’s time to start treating those you depend to keep your business afloat as honest and reasonable people to be wooed, instead of thieves and criminals to be sue.

The entire concept of DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) consumer control is, after all, built on a fallacy — that it’s within the realms of possibility to develop a technology able to prevent people from using one means or another to copy something they can see and/or hear.

Coupled with that is the other fallacy — that Copyright is a right.

But there’s no sign of repentance from Stringer.

Rather, it’s all Apple’s fault, he says.

“Sony would have beaten Apple in the race for digital music customers had the Japanese firm made its technology more open, according to Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer,” says Strategy Eye.

Sony, “lost out because it relied on restrictive digital rights management (DRM) at a time when consumers were demanding access to music from different sources,” says the story, going on:

“In an interview with Nikkei Electronics Asia, Stringer blames DRM for the failure of Sony’s CONNECT music download service. The system meant that only sites that signed contracts with Sony could offer music to CONNECT customers.”

If the company had, “gone with open technology from the start, I think we probably would have beaten Apple,” Musically has Stringer saying, adding:

“We can’t only build what we want to build.”

Stay tuned.

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Strategy Eye – Sony chief blames DRM for defeat by Apple, May 12, 2009
Musically – Sony boss admits mistakes on copy protection, May 12, 2009

If you haven’t already seen it, The Corporation is available from all fine P2P networks. Or, as the site says,  “If you already downloaded the film (with the best of intentions, we’re sure!) why not check out the Special Edition DVD, packed with over 8 hours of extras?”

If those eight hours are anything like the main feature, it’ll be money well spent.

Meanwhile,  if the corporations are people, how about MPAA, Inc, with Dan ‘The Joker’ Glickman as its chairman (although not for much longer)? If it was a real, instead of unreal, person, it would have been institutionalised long ago.

“The US Copyright Office is conducting hearings on the exemptions under the DMCA (they do this every three years) and Rebecca Tushnet has been providing detailed coverage,” said Michael Geist last week, going on:

“A full day was devoted to the issue of an exemption for teachers and students so that they could circumvent the locks on DVDs to show film clips in class or as part of an assignment.  The education community are pushing for an expansion of the exemption to more broadly cover teachers and students.  The MPAA doesn’t want an exemption at all, or, if there is one, argues it should be very limited.

“Among the stranger moments of the hearings was the MPAA’s argument that there is no need for an exemption since there is an analog way to create film clips.  Rather than break the encryption on a DVD, teachers could camcord the same film clips.  In fact, the organization showed a video demonstrating how to effectively camcord clips of DVDs without breaking the encryption on the DVD.”

No! Really!

Has the MPAA been reading p2pnet?

“DRM isn’t a dead horse: it was never even born,” we said recently.”If you can see or hear something, someone somewhere will figure out a way to copy it via one analogue or digital means or another.

“End of story. Period. Full stop.”

In our re-run of Michael’s original blog item, Schmock says in a comment post, “Haha – and audio files ‘may’ be copied with a microphone held in front of the speaker? These guys don’t have to run a mental health check before getting their jobs, do they?”

Obviously not.

“So,” says  a Reader’s Write, “now the anti-ripping theme has come home to bite them on the butt,” going on »»»

In all this digital transformation, the one thing that has been strenuously objected to is fair use. I know Canada doesn’t have fair use but they have something more important which is legal downloading because they are paying for the privilege in high surcharges for blank media.

We too, are paying surcharges hidden in the cost of the blank media. Only we aren’t getting anything for that. It was passed with the promise that the money would go to support the artists and has been being charged ever since the days of cassettes. Only not one artist has yet to receive a penny of that money, despite lawsuits by artists suing to get their share. So much for being for the artist.

Now big entertainment wants complete lock down of everything. As Schmock above says, that isn’t possible because it is too easy to circumvent. Lock downs don’t transfer with the audio listening side. Once it hits the speaker, all locks are off.

So the fight against ripping has no real feet to stand on, beyond the big entertainment’s idea they want to control every aspect of their product. More and more they become disconnected to the what their customer needs, desires, and is willing to spend money for.

Buying digital has become a minefield where you, the customer gets ripped off through the whole process. If and when the inevitable happens and the on-line store goes down, so does access to the music you paid to have. So you have rented it, not bought it as was your intention at the start. Ripping the music is the only way to have what you bought from now on. Burning it doesn’t last as the burned disc has not the life of the pressed disc on physical media.

So here comes big entertainment out with the cavalry hoping to stave off the one thing the customer really needs to make buying worth while. No wonder on-line stores are doing so poorly, unlike indies. High prices, lack of having anything for your money, and the loss of that product you bought under the expectation that it was yours and not a rental, has made the majority of customers very dubious of on-line purchases.

Ripping makes a lot of sense, just not to those that want you to buy, buy, and buy yet again the same thing. It worked in the past because of changing media. It doesn’t work today with the same media.

They’ve made copyright laws such a minefield that it is no longer worth the hassles. Those suffering the most are libraries and school applications which have traditionally been granted the ability to use. The very ones that should have this access are the sideline victims of the wish to control every aspect.

“The deal has changed for what you get, it’s not worth it anymore,”" says the comment.

Ain’t that the truth.

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Michael Geist – Hollywood’s MPAA: Cammer Supreme, May 9, 2009
not for much longer – MPAA boss Dan Glickman: on his way out, April 2, 2009
p2pnet - LaLa and DRM, May 8, 2009
blog item – The MPAA on How to Camcord, May 8, 2009

If you can see or hear something, someone somewhere will figure out a way to copy it via one analogue or digital means or another.

End of story. Period. Full stop.

Yet the many and various elements of the corporate music, movie and software cartels continue to discuss it not only as though it exists, but as though it serves a genuinely useful purpose.

Warner Music Group, an investor in both imeem and Lala, “took a $16 million charge to write down its investment in imeem, and an $11 million charge to write down part of its investment in Lala, plus it took another $4 million charge to write down a bad debt from imeem which it never expects to collect,” p2pnet has TechCrunch saying in an earlier story.

What has that to do with DRM?

On his blog, Michael Robertson says he’s already written about how LaLa uses/used DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) consumer control to, “lock their users into a system where they control how music is used”.

He said he was surprised some readers, “didn’t see Lala’s service as a form of DRM”.  So he offers a clever ‘Q&A’ in which LaLa’s responses are “exact quotes” pulled from its patent application to the federal government describing its technology »»»

Q: In my description of the Lala locker system I said you used “Server DRM”. Some objected to my description of what you’re doing. How do you describe your system?

A: The system provides consumers with access to the digital media from any internet-connected device while enforcing the intended uses by the copyright owners. A network-based DRM system manages digital media assets stored in the network.

Q: So Lala has created something new called “Network DRM”?

A: See patent: Network Based Digital Rights Management System.

Q: Who at Lala gets credit for creating Network DRM?

A: Anselm P. Baird-Smith (Lala co-founder), Vu Nguyen (Lala co-founder & Chairman), Raymond Walsh (Sr. Software Engineer), William A. Alvarado (Lala founder), Zelidrag Hornung (Lala Distinguished Engineer now at Google)

Q: How does Lala’s “network-based DRM” compare with previous file based DRM that people are more familiar with like that from Microsoft and Apple?

A: Many Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies have emerged including Microsoft Windows Media DRM and Apple’s Fairplay. These technologies have suffered from a lack of interoperability due to competitive/licensing issues as well as expensive implementation requirements.

Q: So how is Network DRM better?

A: By delivering the product directly from the network, only authorized users and devices can access the media. Access by users and devices is controlled on the web and can be constantly adapted to changing technologies and market pressures.

Q: How is Network DRM good for the content owners?

A: Access to the digital media is controlled by the Digital Rights Management (DRM) process. The DRM process is invoked any time that a user interacts with the managed digital media. The DRM process is capable of computing the permissible uses in real-time, proving real-time control over the assets.

Q: In my article I warned people that with Lala they cannot download their tracks meaning, ultimately, the record labels are in control of their media. Is that accurate?

A: The web restricted nature of the offering means that the digital assets are at all times controlled by the system (versus digital files downloaded to users) and thus result in minimal piracy.

Q: In your system do consumers control their property or do copyright owners, such as record labels and publishers?

A: The system also allows for the “revoking” of ownership of digital media. For example, if a user is known to have illegally shared a file, the copyright owner may choose to revoke their ownership of the digital media in the system, limiting the rights of such user to the media.

“There you have it,” Robertson finishes off, “Lala describing their own system as ‘network DRM’, explaining how ‘digital assets are at all times controlled by the system’, only ‘authorized devices’ are permitted and the record labels can ‘revoke’ content. Moving the locks from individual files to the server is still DRM because the user never owns their media and the rules can change at anytime. Even more concerning Lala readily admits that record labels – their financial backers – are setting the rules. (This is why Lala will not let you listen to your music on a mobile phone.)

And, “There’s an open offer to Lala to respond to the above questions and I will post their response unedited on this blog,” he adds.

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p2pnet – Warner, $33M down the ‘digital music drain’, May 8, 2009
Michael Robertson – Lala On Network DRM, May 5, 2009

Describing what amounts to a kind of DRM, “This type of technology is used to analyze the acoustic properties of a song and then recommend other songs that sound similar,” he says, pointing out the news should be both interesting and relevant for anyone who’s into this kind of research, or who has a business depending on their ability to, “not be beholden to potentially onerous intellectual property”.

He goes on »»»

It’s also used in what’s commonly referred to as fingerprinting, which is what the popular iPhone app by Shazam does when it uniquely identifies a song you’re listening to.

A first patent was granted to MIS in 2006 and a second that would further cement MIS’ stealthy grip is currently at the USPTO pending approval.

There seems to be a great deal of prior art that’s being ignored by the USPTO, or that simply hasn’t emerged. If it isn’t called into public view and clearly posted where the USPTO reviewers can easily find it, there’s a serious risk that much of the research in the field of music information retrieval will be gated off by this company.

Researchers and others working in this field need to be made aware of this so it can be addressed. Putting forth all the prior art (PRIOR TO MID 2001) seems to be the key to blocking this intellectual property grab.

And to even overturning the already existing patent, which likely should never have been granted in the first place, if a thorough review of prior art had been conducted or brought to the attention of the USPTO reviewers.

It appears there are a number of companies and investors who should be interested in taking a close look at this including Music IP, Fraunhofer Institute, Double V3, BMAT, Echo Nest, Queen Mary University, and plenty of others.

The patent in question can be found here: http://www.google.com/patents?id=N0R6AAAAEBAJ&dq=7081579

Let’s take a close look at Claim One…

Claim Number One in the patent titled “Method and system for music recommendation – Vicenç Gaitan Alcalde et al” seems to attempt to exclusively protect and would prevent anyone from doing any type of machine-based music recommending. If you’re extracting and processing ALL OF THE SAME features MIS is extracting, regardless of whether or not you’re extracting additional features, you would seem to be in violation of Claim One. If you’re employing steps A through G (see claim below), you may be in violation of Claim One. Readers of this post should confirm this: It’s not enough to be doing more (a superset) than what the claim herein describes. You must be doing something different! If you’re doing ALL of the things (inclusive) described in this claim, you may be in violation.

This is the Actual Claim from the MIS patent with a few added notes in brackets for clarity

A method of analyzing music, said method comprising the steps of:

a) providing a digital database comprising a plurality of digital song files;

b) selecting one of said song files for analysis;

c) dividing said selected song file into a plurality of discrete parts;

d) using Fast Fourier Transform techniques on each part of said selected song file to establish a plurality of coefficients, wherein said coefficients are representative of predetermined quantifiable characteristics of said selected song, and; wherein each said predetermined characteristic is a physical parameter based on human perception including:

brightness;
[Brightness is quantified as a spectral histogram built from the FFT.]

bandwidth;
[Bandwidth is quantified as the variance of the spectral histogram built from the FFT]

tempo;
[Tempo is quantified as a measure obtained using a "Beat Tracker" algorithm (based upon autocorrelation values). The Beat tracker algorithm calculates how many beats per second are in a "chunk."]

volume;
[Volume is quantified as the average change in the bit sample amplitudes at lag 1. Lag 1 refers to consecutive beats.]

rhythm;
[Not quantified]

low frequency;
[Low Frequency is quantified as spectral power weighted with ten inverse frequency.]

noise; and
Noise is quantified as the sum of all the FFT coefficients normalized to the maximum FFT coefficient.

octave, and [Octave is quantified as the temporal mean of Cepstrum (inverse of the logarithmic FFT). The Octave is calculated for each chunk and averaged.]

how said parameters change over time;

e) determining an average value of the coefficients for each characteristic from each said part of said selected song file;

f) compiling a song vector comprising a sequential list of said average values of the coefficients for each said characteristic for said selected song file; and

g) repeating steps b) through f) for each song in said database.

And it gets more severe, says the email, adding »»»

In a subsequent patent (pending) filing (link below), MIS has tightened the language to prevent anyone from using even a single feature analyzed and extracted from a music file.

Take a close look at the last sentence. The word “including” has been changed to “consisting”.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=mVCZAAAAEBAJ&dq=11/492,355

Original Clause D

d) using Fast Fourier Transform techniques on each part of said selected song file to establish a plurality of coefficients, wherein said coefficients are representative of predetermined quantifiable characteristics of said selected song, and; wherein each said predetermined characteristic is a physical parameter based on human perception including:

New Clause D

d) using Fast Fourier Transform techniques on each part of said selected song file to establish a plurality of coefficients, wherein said coefficients are representative of predetermined quantifiable characteristics of said selected song, and; wherein each said predetermined characteristic is a physical parameter based on human perception selected from the group consisting of:

Researchers and companies wanting to preserve their rights to use and capitalize on these music analysis techniques for use in recommendation, “only need to reveal and draw attention to prior art (prior to mid 2001) that demonstrates that CLAIM ONE (exactly) was practiced in the field prior to 2001,” says my mate.

Stay tuned.

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April, 2009

Simply put, Directv can and has turned off the paid for Television programming of consumers. Then, while holding the consumers programming hostage, demanded more money be paid to get the programming back.

For those who used counter measures to stop that theft, Directv successfully sued them in Federal court asserting DRM rights. Laws have got to be in place to protect the consumer from DRM theft. In Luaces V Directv, 31 states attorney generals fined directv 11 million as settlement. The DRM holder’s right cannot extend first to that of theft and then have courts make awards to the DRM holder because consumers tried to prevent that same theft.

Constitutional protections support one’s right to protect there property from theft of any kind.

When a DRM holder decides to steal, courts have decided to ignore the constitutional protections to protect your property from theft.

Switching off

“Ghandi is a great comparison,” says Gene in an email. “Passive resistance is what I am practicing,” he says, referring to a Reader’s Write he posted under Us versus Them.

He’s says he’s a victim of DirecTV DRM and he’s just started a site called  Theft by DRM.

In it his p2pnet comment post, “In response to our government having not protected innocent people who were sued, I found that following Gandhi to be useful,” he says, going on, “Ignoring justice to restore justice is a great form of passive resistance.

And in his email, “In my own case, I’ve lost a dog named Justice. Even though sued by attorney general’s from 31 states for the theft of programming and a settlement reached, I was later sued individually in another court for trying to stop that theft.

” Our Justice system has a responsibility to protect the public’s right to property and to investigate those copyright holders who turn our products off  through the unlawful use of DRM.

“Our justice system cannot permit corporations to use there intellectual property rights to steal our products where authorization doesn’t exist.  Then later use DRM laws to sue individuals under DRM statutes because they
tried to block a theft when a drm holder decided to use there rights unlawfully.”

The Broadcast Flag

The subtitle of Gene’s new site is American’s against Theft by DRM owner. It’s a, “Grass Roots organization to get congress and the Justice system to protect the public from the Digital Rights holder using Digital rights illegally,” it says, pointing out:

“There are embedded chips in many of the things we buy and use every day,” it says.

“These chips can be used to turn on or turn your products off. You can find these chips in your refrigerator, Stove, Television, Automobile, and so on. The only person who can control these chips is the company or individual who has been assigned the right.

“Some of these people who hold this Digital Right have used the right to steal or commit fraud.”

“A broadcast flag is a set of status bits (or a ‘flag’) sent in the data stream of a digital television program that indicates whether or not the data stream can be recorded, or if there are any restrictions on recorded content. Possible restrictions include the inability to save an unencrypted digital program to a hard disk or other non-volatile storage, inability to make secondary copies of recorded content (in order to share or archive), forceful reduction of quality when recording (such as reducing high-definition video to the resolution of standard TVs), and inability to skip over commercials.”

That’s the Wikipedia description and early in 2000, it was THE big point of controversy.

Broadcast Flag was, “about the movie studios demanding unprecedented veto power over digital technology because they believe they can see into the future and have the right to knee-cap technological innovation, free competition, and consumer rights in order to prop up aging business models,” wrote Cory Doctorow when he still worked for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “They are wrong.”

Then, “the DC Circuit of the US Court of Appeals struck down the loathsome Broadcast Flag, ruling that the FCC does not have the jurisdiction to regulate what people do with TV shows after they’ve received them,” he posted on BoingBoing.

But you know what they say about roses.  They smell the same no matter what you call them.

Sneakily following us around online

In a post reporting that web-like behavioral marketing will soon be featured on a TV screen near you, we quoted Search Engine Journal as explaining online, tracking codes are implemented as cookies on a user’s computer as s/he’s, “served ads from various online advertising networks.

“Sites visited, content viewed, and length of visit are then all databased and analyzed to predict an online behavioral pattern for such a user, thereby classifying that user by his/her online demographic. Behavioral ad networks then serve targeted advertising related to that user’s behavioral classification, regardless of where s/he then visit.”

In other words, they’re sneakily following us around online, spying on our every move so they can try and figure out how to Shanghai us somewhere along the way, we said, going on »»»

“Verizon will start targeting advertising on a household level by the end of the year, allowing advertisers to target homes, rather than shows, or to buy specific demographics and behaviors via the set-top box,” says Advertising Age.

Has anyone asked you if you’re OK with that?

The assumptions and presumptions are: you’ll be sitting there with your tongue hanging out just dying to be ‘targeted,’ which is to say they’ll use anything their tiny, devious minds can come up with to not only try and make you believe whatever it is they’re peddling has value, but to force it in front of you, whether you want to see it or not.

For this to be effective, the adco set-top boxes will have to come complete with some kind of spy technology — TV cookies, in effect –  that’ll phone home with precise details of what you’re watching, when you’re watching, how long you watch for, and so on.

Then they’ll know how to “best improve your television viewing experience”.

Online, we can protect ourselves to a very considerable extent with various kinds of ad blockers and cookie killers.

Will we be able to do the same once web-style advertising hits our home TV sets?

But, “It’s already here,” said Maelstorm in a Reader’s Write, stressing »»»

With digital cable, the cable company can “read” the box and see what channel it’s on. Not only that, they can also see what buttons you are hitting on the remote in real-time. How do I know this? I had a problem with the cable and the support tech on the other end of the call went inside the box and could see exactly what I was doing in regards to what buttons I was pressing on the remote.

The telephone company version of this is that the SERVER sends the feed to you over a VDSL line. The set-top box sends the request to the VDSL modem (If it’s not integrated) and the modem sends it to the network which eventually ends up at the telco’s servers. Every modem has a unique ID and a unique SSL certificate to authenticate it to the server. Since the server does the authentication, it knows which box made which requests, and what streams are being sent to which boxes.

With this, they can gather enough data for a “targeted” solution. A tomahawk cruise missile coming to a living room near you.

Directv reached into my set top box and turned off my movies

Set-top boxes can, of course, be about more than purloining user data. And Gene knows all about that, as per his time line below.

• 1996- Directv sends employees to Canada to work with Royal Canadian Mounter Police
• 1996- Quoted in the Toronto Star, Judge Craig :  http://www.efc.ca/pages/media/toronto.star.22nov96b.html accused the RCMP of working for US corporations such as Directv, instead of working on behalf of Canadians. It was later said that: DirecTV is not a lawful distributor in Canada, since it is not licensed by the CRTC to offer satellite service in Canada. Craig questioned why the RCMP were conducting seizures and raids on behalf of Directv when Directv was not registered by the CRTC. Also the Judge questioned monies exchanged between Directv and the RCMP
• 1997- Class action filed against Directv in Luaces V Directv for having taken programming away from subscribers.  Attorneys general from 31 states signed onto this and reached a settlement with Directv paying $11 million.
• 1998- Nov. 24, 1998 a business named Vcipher raided in Canada. It cannot be confirmed, but it was said Directv was present for this raid and shortly thereafter, received data records from the Vcipher business. It was also said, but cannot be confiirmed, that shortly thereafter, Directv received the customer data base from that November 24, 1998 raid. The records were then used till 2005, the next 7 years, to file suits against some 30,000 persons in the US. One of the problems noted was that in most states there is only a two year statute of Limitations once Directv first learned of the individual’s identity but then used this data base from 1998 for 7 years.
• 1998-  The November 24, 1998 Vcipher data base was used to sue 70 people in a California court before Judge Manual Real.
• 2001-  Around this date Directv decided to step up their lawsuits against people whose names were obtained from Canadian data bases to include the Vcipher 1998 data bases. Directv failed to differentiate between those who were members of the 1997  Class action who had bought an access card to stop or block the 1997 theft, from those intending to steal Directv programming. They simply sued everyone to include those who bought the Canadian access card to prevent the, according to what the Luaces V Directv lawsuit said, Bait and Switch. This was the case where victims of the bait and switch were sued for having defended against it.
• 2005-  2005  or there abouts the 11 circuit appeals court issues a decision regarding the Directv lawsuits. It was shortly there after, Directv discontinued their suits.

“On January 10, 1997 Directv reached into my set top box and turned off my movie channels,” he says. “They did this to 1 million subscribers. Then refused any refund and said they would give back the movie channels if I paid them more.”

The quote at the beginning of this popst refers to counter-measures, and Gene knows about that too.

“Knowing in advance of the planned theft, I bought an an access card from a supplier in Canada,” he says, continuing »»»

The cards were legal to buy in Canada 1997 and paid subscribers are permitted to buy the card was the only way to obtain your programming.

But there is a deeper right.

The right to protect the things you buy when you find someone intends to steal it. I have no problem buying an access card in an effort to protect my programming from theft. I cannot help directv wanted to take consumer programming away via DRM but I have a basic right to defend that which is mine. And that theft did occur as the settlement in Luaces of 11 million was paid class members.

In 2003, the company mailed me a letter. I called them and reminded them I was with in my rights as they were fined 11 million under a 31 state attorney general agreement. A month later they filed suit in Federal court.

They said nothing of there prior theft of my programming. They said nothing of the prior settlement with 31 state attorney general’s. They said nothing that they broke the access cards I had to buy. They said nothing that I bought the access card to stop a theft they committed. Worse, they even said I had not paid for service when I was part of the 31 state attorney general class action.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there are thieves around. Not much I can do about them. But when justice takes the side of thieves and forgets the right of victims, we have a major problem. While DirectTv did what they did, the US government should have stopped any such lawsuit as the later lawsuit settlement now changed the class action  settlement.

That’s the reason why two courts should ever be used. Now we have conflicting settlements — one from 1998, and another from 2005 and under different judges and diferent courts.

Which one do we follow? DirectTv attorney’s are just like RIAA attorney’s.

From a fundamental standpoint, our constitution permits people to take passive measures to protect from theft and fraud. The purchase of the access card is permitted under the law under two points. One, subscribers in 1997 bought there own access cards and permitted directv to control the card. But never to control the card to commit theft of programming. Two, Our constitution permits a person to defend against theft. If the DRM rights holder does not want to loose there rights, do not use the rights to commit theft.

Then the DRM statutes permit a rights holder to profit from that prior theft. It forces the victim of theft by DRM to pay the perpetrator. The perpetrator stands to gain from the crime. As a victim of DRM theft, no one recognizes the Victim/whiteness statutes where victims are helped. It has become clear to me that our justice system prefers a DRM rights holder to profit in a civil suitarising out of a theft where digital rights were used to carry out that theft.

I have to say that all this is very backwards. I can no longer stand by a system where the justice system assists the  perpetrator in profiting from theft. This is why the next time I am a juror or a whiteness, I have to ignore justice. It was far worse for justice to ignore a victim of crime in my estimation. The only thing which was truthful in that federal lawsuit was I bought one access card and had that one repaired. The entire thing was made up yet people are permitted to lie to courts in order to profit from awards.

I think if you read Luaces V Directv, it becomes clear just what they did.

I think if you read Luaces V DirectTv, (Miami Federal 1997) it becomes clear just what they did. They used their intellectual property rights to reach in and turn off programming. Then as the suit says, tried to get subscribers to pay even more.

Under those circumstances, one has been guaranteed a constitutional right to protect their programming. The purchase of an access card which blocks their unlawful use of the access card (there DRM rights) is how a person would protect from a theft. For the justice system to advocate differently would be to embrace the thought

The DRM rights owner can take away at anytime and you can do nothing but sue. Sue a 6 billion dollar company?  I should be so rich. The access card is a double edge sword. When used responsibily, it is of value,when used to take away customer programming, the customer can employ the use of another access card for protection to stop a crime.

The government is on a very slippery slope when they say, no one can use counter measures where an intellectual property owner is involved. This then would provide a license to steal should the rights holder decide. Then in the case where the public uses counter measures to reverse a theft, defend from theft by DRM owner, DRM laws favor the perpetrator suing the victim for not having cooperated during the theft.

When the DRM rights owner sues, the suits end in confidental agreements. The person who defended their peoperty end up having to sign away constitutional rights and liberties while the DRM owner signs away no such rights. These confidental settlement agreements between citizens and private corporations are not good public policy.

In another Reader’s Write, Gene says, “Thoreau declared that, if the government requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

“Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.”

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April, 2009

Alex Hanff, internationally famous for his continuing efforts to make sure personal data pirate Phorm doesn’t get away with online robbery, is now wondering if it isn’t time to sue video game company EA for fraud.

“Hey Jon,” Alex says in an email, “as you know I work pretty hard and occassionally when I find a little bit of time for myself I like to play the odd computer game.  Nothing excessive – maybe a round on Tiger Woods or a few races in Need for Speed.”

Need for Speed: Carbon, also known as NFS Carbon or NFSC, is an Electronic Arts video game that’s part of the Need for Speed series, explains the Wikipedia, going on the game is set in fictional Coast City and features various kinds of cars with various kinds of capabilities.

With that as background, “I recently finished Need for Speed Most Wanted (which I purchased in 2005 so it shows how often I game) and decided to buy Need for Speed Underground: Carbon,” says Alex, going on »»»

I went to EA’s web site and they have it available on download which to me is far more convenient than having to go to a store and purchase a hard copy, so I went ahead and purchased it.

After a long download I installed the game and then attempted to play. But before I could play I had to activate the game with the Activation Code provided when I purchased it.

To my surprise I got an error back saying the activation code was in use by someone else.

I was annoyed because EA issued me with an invalid code making it impossible for me to launch the game I’d paid for.

So I signed up to the EA Support site and issued a support ticket to which I got a standard email reply saying the ticket had been initiated and that I’d hear back within 24 hours.

Five days later, I finally get a response asking for a bunch of details such as the invoice number, the code that wasn’t working and my personal details – which I provided.  I got a response saying the situation was more complicated than they thought and would require further investigation which could take more time.

Two weeks have now passed and I still don’t have access to the game. Nor have I had any further response from EA.

This makes me very angry and leaves me thinking perhaps it’s time for me to go to the police and file fraud charges against EA as they have taken my money but failed to provide me with the product I purchased.

“Once again this highlights that the only people effected by DRM are legitimate customers,” Alex adds.

Stay tuned.

personal data pirate Phorm – Phorm phounder tangles with Sir Tim, March 12, 2009

April, 2009

restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.

The tacky Frog has croaked its last croak its assets, such as they are, going to creditors, p2pnet was happy to report yesterday.

The Advertisement Upheld Circumvoluted Amphibian, sadly associated with Universal Music, was doomed to failure from day one.

Henry continues »»»

1. Anybody who thinks that ‘downloads = lost sales’ (the standard industry talking-point) should really consider whether that’s true, because if it IS true, then Spiralfrog represented nothing less than the labels cutting their own throats.

I mean, to use their own ‘logic’ against them, ‘why would anybody pay when they can get it for free?’

If they were correct with this objection, you’d expect to see at least a REALLY serious drop in album sales, when a ‘free’ version was offered on Spiralfrog. Did it happen? I’m pretty sure it didn’t, because they’re still issuing gold records and indulging in all the usual MAFIAA-sanctioned self-congratulation as per usual.

So they’ve basically conceded the first point usually raised by p2p-advocates (namely, that downloads and ‘available for free’ do not translate to ‘lost sales’, so much as ‘really easy advertising.’

2. Spiralfrog also demonstrates why people don’t like DRM-’protected’ (hobbled) formats: even the most non-techie understands that digital and analog are different, and that one of the big advantages to digital is easy duplication.

DRM represents an inherently faulty attempt to make digital media ‘behave’ like analog media (by, for example, forcibly binding the information to a particular plastic disc or suchlike, by introducing an extra layer of ‘licensing’ bullshit.)

People don’t like that, and the media companies know this. Actually, the corporatocracy is trapped by its own methods: to remain profitable, they have to aggressively hype the ‘next big thing’ (which is portable media players). But for those players to actually be worth buying, they can’t afford to attempt ‘vendor lock-in’ too often, or they risk pissing off formerly-docile consumers, and essentially turning people onto the p2p and ‘piracy’ thing. I mean, come on — the minute they offer the first ‘freebie’, they’ve conceeded the whole thing. Thus, nobody in their right mind would continue to have any serious qualms about getting a ‘free version’ that’s NOT broken and hobbled with DRM, even if they have to use REAL p2p networks to do so.

3. The last thing that’s really kinda funny about Spiralfrog and stuff like this is how — yet again — the RIAA’s backers feel the need to cobble together a fake version of what’s (supposedly) killing them:
They did this with Napster and mp3.com.

Spiralfrog may not have co-opted an existing brand, but the fact that the MAFIAA even allowed something like it is revealing in itself:

They’ve always known that their anti-p2p propaganda, relentless whoring for longer copyright terms, and other assorted bullshit makes no sense. Spiralfrog (poor attempt that it is) demonstrates that they also understand the ‘try before you buy’ mentality, and that trying vainly to ‘monetize’ each and every use to which one’s ‘content’ is put can only end badly.

In short, they understand full well that they’ve lost, and they never actually had a leg to stand on in the first place.

It’s also pretty revealing that iMesh still exists, Rhapsody allows ’streaming for free’ (even in as limited a fashion as it does) etc.

THIS is why I keep saying we need to be able to think on a ‘bigger’ scale than the other side.

Sorry for the long post, but hey…stuff to think about.

No worries, Henry. And no need to stay tuned.

p2pnet – Spiral Frog croaks its last croak, March, 2009

A few days’ testing disclosed heavy duty DRM, “some of it unrelated to media files,” he says , going on »»»

A legitimate copy of Photoshop CS4 stopped functioning after we clobbered a nagging registration screen by replacing a DLL with a hacked version. With regard to media files, the days of capturing an audio program on your PC seem to be over (if the program originated on that PC). The inputs of your sound card are severely degraded in software if the card is also playing an audio program (tested here with Grooveshark).

And that’s not all, says TechForensics. It may only be “the tip of the iceberg”.

“Being in bed with the RIAA is bad enough, but locking your own files away from you is a tactic so outrageous it may kill the OS for many persons,” says the post. “Many users will not want to experiment with a second sound card or computer just to record from online sources, or boot up under a Linux that supports ntfs-3g just to control their files.”

But over at CNet News, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes  isn’t impressed.

In fact, the item is, “utter nonesense [sic],” he says.

How so?

“Someone messes about with Photoshop in order to crack it, the program then breaks, and that’s somehow the fault of Windows?!?!!” – he says incredulously, going on »»»

• Why would Photoshop CS4 contains [sic] some super-secret anti-tamper system that’s incorporated into Windows 7?
• What DLL was changed? Cracks are very variable and many just don’t work.
• As to the inability to record, this is also an issue under Vista, and is highly dependent on the sound card and sound card driver used. An example of this is Realtek drivers – OEM supplied drivers usually have recording crippled and to get access to full features you have to download the full driver.

And TechForensics, “goes on to howl at the moon about Windows firewall (describing behavior already exhibited by Windows firewall in Vista),” adds Kingsley-Hughes.

DRM? Or not DRM?

Stay tuned.

Slashdot – Draconian DRM revealed in Windows 7, February 16, 2009
CNet News – Worst. Windows 7. Piece. EVER!, February 17, 2009

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act bans people from defeat in technical protections for copyrighted materials (such as DRM on iTunes songs and encryption on DVDs). The act requires the government to review items that should be exempted every three years.

A recent filing to the US Copyright Office elicited a response from Apple, and smartly.

It seems Apple doesn’t want users to be able to dual boot in differing operating systems; and I quote »»»

Ever since the first model, Apple engineers have designed the iPhone to contain technological protection measures (TPMs) that protect two critical pieces of software resident in the device that are core to it functioning – the bootloader and the operating system (OS). Th bootloader is a small computer program stored in nonvolatile memory (ie, memory that is not erased when the power goes off) that is automatically read and executed when power to the iPhone is turned on.

Its principal function is to perform a few initial tests of the hardware, then to load the OS into the device’s main (volatile) memory for operation. The OS is the core operating software of the iPhone. It is responsible for handling the details of the operation of the device’s hardware and for management and coordination of activities and operations that are necessary for the making and receiving of phone calls and for application programs (such as email and calendar) to execute on the device. Apple owns the copyrights in both the bootloader and the OS.

And later in the same document »»»

These TPMs do more, however, than simply help ensure the quality of the customer’s experience with iPhone applications. They also protect Apple’s copyright interests in its own content, as well as the copyright interests of third parties in their content, that plays on the iPhone. There are many instances in which unauthorized persons “strip” the TPMs protecting such content, thereby placing it “in the clear” (i.e., in unprotected form). With the TPM removed, pirated copies of the content in unprotected form can then be widely distributed among persons who do not pay for it, typically through unlawful peer-to-peer networks and other online distribution sites. Such has happened, for example, to a copyrighted game owned by Apple called “Texas Hold ‘Em,” as well as to a host of popular games from third party vendors. However, the stripped games can be played only on jailbroken iPhones, because the TPMs on the iPhone would otherwise prevent them from playing. Apple believes thatn the proposed exemption would further facilitate and encourage this form of piracy. Piracy, in turn, can ndiminish the investment that developers are willing to make in then creation of copyrighted works for the iPhone, contrary to then fundamental purpose of the copyright law to encourage the creation of bnew works of authorship.

In other words, their real objection is you might use your “jail-broken” phone for P2P.

Yep – Apple has definitely joined the ranks of the Industry.

Will the next step be RIAA takedown notices for modified boot-loaders on iPhones?

Tom Koltai – p2pnet
[Koltai says he's an, "old fart (50 yo) who's an economist in Sydney Australia. He's been online for 26 years, has run several ISPs and, "lobbied governments in four countries to prevent Internet restrictive usage legislation from being enacted". He says he's a strong believer in P2P, "as being a technological requirement to fully exploit the convergence of telephony with computers and remove the last barriers to human communication and interaction".]

February , 2009