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Here is a better thread on how to defeat Key2Audio protection

Or just look at the picture and you can see the ring that you blot out with a marker.

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/...

There are a hundred links to the article with a simple search, but just use "Valve customer service score" and search for dates in the last week or so, you should have a plethora. I just chose one at random.

My point is that a) there is no technology that can be used to block the willfull copying of something, if someone truly wants to. Bono is completely clueless. He is to piracy what Jennie McCarthy is to doctors trying to immunize children.
As for apple with out Jobs, it will suffer the EXACT same thing that has happened to all other formats that people discover aren't easily manipulable. No one will buy enough to warrant it remaining. It will fail. Just like 3d TV failed. Just like HD DVD failed. Until Hollywood accepts that their will acceptable losses on all products sold and stuff is allowed to return to the public domain this will continue.

Here's a short English article, though it doesn't explain much more than the summary and the above comment: Finnish police probe Wikipedia's donation requests.

http://birds-are-nice.me/programming/asfview.shtml

Little something I wrote years ago that reads an ASF file (Or WMA, or WMV) headers and decodes them all into a human-readable dump. Handy thing if you work with media in those formats.

Unless you're in the US. Can't use it there. That format is the subject of a patent. So I'm just going to sit here in the UK and look smug. If I were in the US, I wouldn't have been able to make that. The author of virtualdub is though, so he had to strip ASF-reading functionality out of his software when Microsoft threatened to sue.

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/audio_video/video_editing/virtualdub_1_3c.cfm

A Version of Virtualdub that works with asf. sorry to link you to afterdawn, the site blows thanks to dvdbackup23

This study has been done 100 times and it always reaches the same conclusion. These prosecutions are just serving as a minor revenue stream and a means to legitimize a set of rules that benefit the record companies far more than the consumers or the artists they are purporting to protect.

Humm, well let's see.

1) RIAA and the MPAA spend lots of money lobbying congress. The MPAA for example has a former US Senator as it's current leader, Chris Dodd. Because of lobbying and influence in terms of campaign contributions we have such wonderful legislation like the DMCA.
2) Patent Trolling in the US is a legitimate business, there are examples of this going back nearly 200 years. My favorite example of patent thickets and trolling involves the Sewing Machine wars which started in the 1850s. It's an interesting read.
3) Businesses in this country derive special protection, some business practices while questionable aren't illegal. To make something illegal there has to be some law prohibiting it. If RIAA and the MPAA can go after people with John Doe cases which amount largely to fishing expeditions then that's allowed under our right of due process. Some judges have disagreed with these tactics while some still are proceeding on appeal. reference: https://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-five-years-later
4) The tool that all of these folks use is the DMCA, which is a flawed piece of legislation. Not only is it flawed, it's also being pushed worldwide under the guises of free trade agreements like the "secret" ACTA treaty.
5) Congress really doesn't write anything, they take pieces of put together bullshit from lobbyists, change a couple of things and present it as their own bill. Others attach their bullshit, called a rider onto the Bill that may or may not have anything to do with it but makes it more "passable" because they included a mom + apple pie subsidy along with the big bad legislation. It gets out of dozens of committees and then is voted upon. It's the worst form of legislative process possible run by career politicians and staff people who have no fear of ever losing their jobs. It's no wonder that the approval rating for congress is in the low teens.

So, in simple terms. lobbying + campaign contributions + pre written legislation = DMCA
DMCA + Legal System that allow John Doe suits = (RIAA + MPAA + Big Money Law Firms) + Courts flooded with meaningless cases + defense lawyers + big fees = screwed John Doe who can't defend himself with a fine that exceeds the value of the pilfering many fold.

this is the worst possible outcome and if you download a CD from a file sharing site you could get slapped very heavily. In a word don't do it but in another word, defending yourself in a wrongful prosecution could become extremely costly. That's why John Doe cases need to be abolished, the DMCA needs to be appealed and where pirating has been found, only the value of the property illegally copied * number of copies should be the penalty. If you have kids at home, I suggest you let them know about downloading and its dangers, not just from malware and viruses but because of that knock on the door from a process server saying you're being sued.

What do you mean "doesn't happen under Android" ? Have you been sleeping under a rock?

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2012/12/31/android_malware_using_google_play_store_icon_to_trick_users

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/02/03/android-malware-emerges-on-google-play-which-installs-a-trojan-on-your-pc-uses-your-microphone-to-record-you/

http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/10/3751202/google-android-malware-scanner-test

http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/05/android-malware-surges-despite-googles-efforts-to-bounce-dodgy-apps-off-its-platform-f-secure-ids-51447-unique-samples-in-q3/

If the Play Store gets so much attention from malware writers, the PC ecosystem with a couple of billion of PCs most of them with good network connections(for spam and DDoS) and used to login to banks and in heavy corporate use across the largest companies in the world has no chance not attracting malware.

... but there does need to be some actual evidence beyond "I have your IP address, therefore it was you" stuff they do now. They've been trending too much to the point where they can claim anything with no real evidence, and the courts follow along.

Nonsense: MPAA accuses laser printer

So what's the difference between HP's $99 TouchPad Tablet Selling out in Retailer Fire Sale and Google's $99 Chromebook offer for teachers sells out in one day? A. Commenters didn't accuse HP of "a lazy publicity stunt." :-)

Courts aren't stupid... They would still recognize that as an equally unfair action against competitors.

I disagree with you here. Courts are stupid, at least most of them. If you look at courts around the world, you will see that most senior judges (the ones handling the appeals cases, which are the most important ones) are well over their 40s, and have no affinity whatsoever with technology, let alone the complex internal workings of The Big Evil Internet.

Want proof? Look at the various rulings that prohibit linking for example.

Not to mention the hostility they hold towards internet providers, favoring the Copyright Mafia.

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2011/09/15/install_windows_8_dev_preview_in_vmware_workstation

Looks like the x86 iso on VMWare Workstation 8 is the suggested configuration.

None of that answers the question "what do you think Red Hat can do about it"? Red Hat not supporting SecureBoot is not going to make SecureBoot go away, it is going to make Red Hat go away. How is that good for anyone?

I'm not blaming Red Hat. They're a for-profit company and can't be expected to act any other way. I'm just trying to make people aware of the problems with SecureBoot.

Now, certainly many hardware manufacturers will choose to do that (market forces and all), but not ALL of them will (or have to). In addition, you have a few other companies saying 'hmm, our customers would probably like to run our software on hardware that has our competitors logo - I guess we better enable that'. Do they have to do that? Of course not, but they are pretty stupid if they don't.

Historically, Microsoft has been able to convince their partners to exclude competitor's products.

For example, back in the days of OS/2, Microsoft used a licensing scheme where OEM manufacturers paid them per computer they shipped, not per copy of Windows. That meant OEM manufacturers had no reason to offer OS/2 on their computers, since they already had a Windows license for each one of them (and customers who specifically wanted OS/2 had to pay for both OSes).

Back in the days of Netscape, Microsoft changed the license terms of Windows NT Workstation to limit the number of simultaneous network connections, while at the same time bunding IIS Server with Windows NT Server. That meant anyone who wanted to run a web server on Windows, had to buy Windows NT Server, and then there was no reason to buy another web server software. It also meant a customer had to pay extra if they specifically wanted Netscape's web server software. (This was one of the things they were found guilty of in the US DoJ's anti-trust case.)

Microsoft has also been found guilty of explicitly asking their partners to stop bundling competitor's products, and using late deliveries as a way to pressure them.

Of course, I can't know that Microsoft will continue to use these kinds of methods to limit the number of OSes included in SecureBoot, since I can't see into the future. But I'd be very surprised if they didn't try.

Those who really want to run an alternative OS, will still be able to do it. But Secureboot could be used to make it too much hassle, too expensive, or too scary for the majority of users. You only need to make the competitor's option a little less attractive to nudge the market in the right direction.

There are US senators who have tried to outlaw P2P filesharing software, or make the software authors responsible for preventing piracy, since at least 2004 (CNet, Afterdawn). They're currently not close to succeeding, but the boundaries are constantly being pushed back. So far, we've seen web sites become responsible for what their users upload, then for what they're linking too, then search providers like Google became responsible for listing infringing material in their search results, and so on.

There have also been major attempts to mandate encryption with government backdoors in the United States (Clipper).

This page lets you check your email address to see if it is part of the leak: http://www.afterdawn.com/yahoo_password_leak.cfm

android and not ios is heading towards the largest marketshare in the world (see india custom tablet for example).

Nah, it just isn't, in fact when apple releases a device it always clobbers android sales.

Windows has been on a gigantic decline

200 million iOS devices sold since 2007, 200 million android devices activated since the project began, even if you went to the ridiculous point of doubling that for devices that for whatever reason aren't activated through google and you still fall short of the approximately 650 million Windows 7 licenses sold since late 2009, a much shorter timespan than the lives of iOS and Android.

but has pushed hard to not have studies that mix mobile and desktop OS marketshare as windows is heading towards irrelevant whereas ios will remain relevant.

Nope and the reason why is that most people aren't replacing PCs with tablets and smartphones, they are augmenting PCs with tablets and smartphones. Otherwise we would see a marked decline in Windows sales - corresponding to a rise in mobile device sales - which quite simply is not happening.

Um. Google *can* and does remotely delete apps from phones:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/03/google-using-remote-kill-switch-to-swat-android-malware-apps.ars

And given that Android phones can report what apps you use to carriers, that's probably a really bad idea in a place like Syria.
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2011/11/16/verizon_and_sprint_using_rootkit_to_collect_data_from_android_phones

Seriously? How do you plan to map "There is a Windows 7 machine at 192.160.3.14" to "Bob@hotmail.com logged on from 192.160.3.14" without also getting incredibly confused when "Mary@hotmail.com logged on from 192.160.3.14" at virtually the same time? After all, 192.160.3.14 is a Comcast web proxy server, and THOUSANDS of people are using it.

Let's also say that 50% of the 240M licenses sold at October last year connect to the Internet. And retrieve the page every 15m on average (TFA are unclear on the frequency, but my experience suggests a few minutes is about right). That's 480M log lines per hour (at 64 bytes each say?) or nearly 700GB a day. Why on earth would you bother trying to match that against the dozens of TB of hotmail, MSN or other logs? What possible advantage is there in knowing that the Win7 machine checked in with NCSI ... when you already know it was a Win7 machine at hotmail, because the OS version is in the HTTP headers!?

The FTC uses the Herfindahl index to evaluate market competitiveness. Using just the top 5 carriers (the big four and Tracfone), the current index is 1810 (market share data from here).

'According to the DOJ-FTC 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines, the agencies will regard a market in which the post-merger HHI is below 1500 as "unconcentrated," between 1500 and 2500 as "moderately concentrated," and above 2500 as "highly concentrated." A merger potentially raises "significant competitive concerns" if it produces an increase in the HHI of more than 200 points in a moderately concentrated market or more than 100 points in a highly concentrated market. A merger is presumed "likely to enhance market power" if it produces an increase in the HHI of more than 200 points in a highly concentrated market.'

So by their own definition this merger will raise "significant competitive concerns" since the HHI will increase by 650 points to 2460. With all the other little guys added in, it is fair to say that the final number would be more than 2500, i.e. "highly concentrated."

Yes, there was a $1B mistake with the early XBOX 360. That was written off and paid for a couple of years ago. But, despite that, its proving to be a successful profitable platform - being profitable since 2008.

Im not sure where you get your WII numbers - could you cite your source?

XBOX 360 currently enjoys about 30% market share compared to WII at 36% and PS3 at about 32% (cite). Thats not "two to one" - its 6 percentage points. If you look at the numbers, the WII is loosing market share rapidly. 2010 was a decent year for the Entertainment and Devices Business but revenues were down a bit. You can read the gory (and boring) details in our annual report. Dont forget that the XBOX business is a systems business - we make money many ways with the XBOX system. For example, in July 2010, this article explains that XBOX Live is a $1.2 Billion dollar business. Steam is close to that (cite).

Big companies can make costly mistakes and still thrive. Look at Intels recent $1B problem with SandyBridge. Nobody seems to be freaking out about that (will not too much anyway). There stock price hasnt even really taken a hit.

-foredecker.

Yes, there was a $1B mistake with the early XBOX 360. That was written off and paid for a couple of years ago. But, despite that, its proving to be a successful profitable platform - being profitable since 2008.

Im not sure where you get your WII numbers - could you cite your source?

XBOX 360 currently enjoys about 30% market share compared to WII at 36% and PS3 at about 32% (cite). Thats not "two to one" - its 6 percentage points. If you look at the numbers, the WII is loosing market share rapidly. 2010 was a decent year for the Entertainment and Devices Business but revenues were down a bit. You can read the gory (and boring) details in our annual report. Dont forget that the XBOX business is a systems business - we make money many ways with the XBOX system. For example, in July 2010, this article explains that XBOX Live is a $1.2 Billion dollar business. Steam is close to that (cite).

Big companies can make costly mistakes and still thrive. Look at Intels recent $1B problem with SandyBridge. Nobody seems to be freaking out about that (will not too much anyway). There stock price hasnt even really taken a hit.

-foredecker.

Damn right they are correct. Worse than MW2 is Frogger!

The site says that a player is logged a cheat for gaining achievements without active gameplay.
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Live/Cheating

This sort of a log requires accurate time keeping, which the Xbox does not seem real great at.
http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/695005

FWIW, I'm sitting next to a windows 7 machine that claims to be illegal, it's full of shit.

15 Euros per song - or, maybe, $ 25. If it is good enough for Germany and the EU, it is good enough for the USA.

Nice thought, but I'm afraid unless they have changed things you CAN'T "SWare Iron" out the nasty, because it has both signed key and hardware checks "for security purposes" to insure you don't run a "hacked" OS. If you would like to read more here is the only thing I could find that wasn't just more press releases. Allow me to quote some of the relevant bits "If unsigned software is about to be launched, the OS halts and is restored to clean state." And from the looks of the diagram they have the signatures are used before anything but the firmware, so my guess is jailbreaking one will be quite difficult without bricking it.

If anyone has more info please post it, as looking for anything chrome related just came up with mounds of press releases for me. Also where does this leave Android? I've seen more and more small devices running ARM powered by Android, and this seems to be in direct competition at least on the ARM front.

They can subpoena your phone records from your service provider. How is this any different?

If you're infringing or breaking the law and someone has adequate proof of such, then I don't see where the problem is. You may be opposed to the law, but that doesn't change the fact that they can sue your ass and subpoena information.

You're right to privacy goes out the door once you're breaking the law. After that, they can get warrants and subpoenas to invade your privacy in any number of ways.

Law enforcement can subpoena for your phone records if you've been accused a breaking a criminal law. This ruling is saying a Privately held company that is accusing you of committing a civil infraction can now subpoena for your information.

Law enforcement has a right, as we've given any hopes of privacy from them away years ago. A private company however should not have the right to start subpoena issuing based of their "investigation" work we've seen thus far. Case in point: That old lady that had been sued by the RIAA a couple years ago that didn't even have a computer. or RIAA suing the dead

The truth is that I am amazed the PS3 is still getting any game development anyway. It has long since been overshadowed by the XBox360 and Wii in terms of userbase.

Your information is out of date. The PS3 is right behind the 360. The higher sales of the PS3 have allowed it to catch up to the 360, despite the yearlong headstart. Attach rates are also similar.

The Wii of course, is in a different class.

We should be far from being enthusiasthic about something which Apple touts now but, more or less, neglected a bit up to this point. Also, A5 might be a "major step up"...while at the same time ending up pretty much where other comparable SoCs are.

I don't think that the A4 is the next Skynet. I just think it is a necessary first step if Apple wants to control more in their chip design. We'll see where Apple goes with it.

I don't think your description of Apple's modus operandi is accurate BTW - they actually like to wooe people with first attractive implementation;

Which of Apple's products doesn't fit this mold? The iPod Classic pretty much as the same form factor now as it did when it first launched. The replaced the scroll wheel with the click-wheel, added video, etc. The Mac mini has only gotten smaller. The iMac still is an all-in-machine but now with LCD instead of CRT.

iPod which...is vastly outsold by media players from other manufacturers;

Do you have actual data to support that claim? From Amazon's top seller list, the iPod Touch (#2 and #3) are only out sold in Electronics by a Kindle. Out of the top 20 spots, 6 of them are iPods. #20 is the only other MP3 player, a Sansa. According to some estimates, the iPod holds about 73% of the market.

iTunes on the verge of loosing #1 spot in one of few markets where it's event present (Europe)

[Citation needed] First of all if you are referring to iTunes, the software, it's free so I don't see how it is losing any markets. If you are referring to the store, Apple sold it's 10 billionth song in February and is considered the #1 music store in the world surpassing Wal-mart 2 years ago. And that's just in music. It is the #1 App store at the present as well.

That also means everybody will do pretty much the same thing long term; there is not a lot of functionality which SoCs would need to have added, and limiting power consumption is something generally appreciated. Apple would have a hard time finding somebody who isn't also a competitor one way or another.

Apple is now firmly in control now is every aspect of their chip design. Before they would have to rely on Samsung to implement changes. If Apple wanted to implement encryption on the chip, they could do it instead of waiting for Samsung. They could also drop Samsung which wouldn't have been a practical option if they didn't do their own designs.

The last time Sony tried to redesign the PlayStation controller, they wound up with a Batarang.

Umm... more like almost 75% market share.

will run on Intel or ARM chips, and use Microsoft's Windows operating system.

Some manufacturers just don't get it and some do.

Expect epic fail, Asus. You've been warned.

When I left Gnutella about 7 years ago it wasn't fully decentralized. It required Hubs (or was that Ultrapeers ?). It was also prone to spam and fake attacks because it was forwarding the query itself so that any spammer could tell you that he had the file you asked for. I eventually chose eMule because:

1) It was open source. While the eDonkey client (which eMule was initially based on) was providing better speeds and had a decentralized searchable network (Overnet) it was closed source. My decision proved wise when some years later eDonkey timebombed itself per RIAA's directive. I had a cold dish served by those eDonkey fanboys who were claiming bollocks on the open source argument.

2) It was, and still is, under heavy development. The official client is somewhat stale but modders are working constantly to improve the client. See mods such as Neo, Xtreme, MorphXT and Shark. Mod development comes mainly from Germany, Italy and some from Israel.

3) It developed its own fully decentralized network which is now standard in any installation. In fact I'm not using servers anymore.

All that combined with an anonymous VPN gives me troublefree access to anything I want. The variety of the material is simply amazing. This is far beyond your plain old piratebay copyrighted stuff:

* Old recordings that have gone out of copyright ? Of course
* Fan made movies in their highest quality (without youtube compression) ? You bet
* Service manuals ? Anytime
* I have even found scanned medieval books there that were impossible to find anywhere else on the internet or a public library (apparently some guy has got hold of these somehow and got them public).

The speeds are not great but the overall service is practically bulletproof. It's not by chance eMule has won Sourceforge awards twice in 2006 and 2007.

But the average USA p2p user has always stuck with US-made oldies like WinMX and Gnutella. I've never figured out why.

Also this.
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2009/10/05/full_flash_support_headed_to_android_webos_symbian_blackberry_and_winmo

I know quite a few of them that have automatic updates on, including all my customers. It all "just works". Do you think Aunt Millie could let Ubuntu update without hardware getting broken all over the place? I asked why Ubuntu can't do this basic thing, just update without breaking itself, and I think this comment summed up why Ubuntu is fucked up better than I ever could.

As for Jobs, who doesn't know he is "Mr. Vendor Lockin" by now? Jobs HATES choice, always has, because for him it is all about aesthetics and making everything stylish. Choices just don't fit that mantra, so he don't roll that way. Personally I think it is gonna bite him in the ass with Flash, because while Apple geeks may drool over anything he puts out folks from one side to the other are addicted to those Facebook games like Farmville. I swear Farmville is like catnip to females, and I have sold more new PC and hardware upgrades simple based on "will this make (Farmville, Mafia Wars, that treasure island game) work better? Sold!" so while he may sell to tech geeks in SF/NYC, I don't see them giving them away in fly over states.

So anyone who think Jobs is still a "rebel" or any of that other crap is deluded. He is a master marketer that is solely interested in devices fitting a style and aesthetic. If that style and aesthetic pleases you, you don't mind the limitations or paying nearly 100% markup? cool free market and all. But let us not pretend old Steve really gives a rat's ass about standards or any of that crap. he wants all his "i" devices to fit his vision of what a device should be and do, and Flash is too cludgy to fit his nice sterile designs, at least in his mind, and since he is the boss out it goes. Period.

Now it is anyone's guess whether when the old guy dies if they manage to bring in some "little Steve wannabe" that follows the old man's style to the letter, or another Pepsi guy, we'll just have to wait and see.

Right back at ya...http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/. Although I think it is funny that everyone screamed MSFT users were locked in and couldn't do squat, now it looks like Steve has old Bill beat in that regard. Don't like IE? A dozen other choices easily. Don't like WMP? More choices than you can count. Office? Ditto. Hell from what I understand you don't even have to jailbreak a Windows smartphone to run unauthorized apps!

I think Jon Stewart said it best when he went off on Steve and Apple for the Gizmondo incident. What I will never understand though, is that you have this rabid fanbase that brags they pick up devices with a nearly 100% markup, is more locked down than anything the Ballmer monkey ever even dreamed of, yet the act like it somehow gives them this cool vibe to pay beyond top dollar for total lock in. Sorry, but I just don't get it. But then again I was always the type that liked having slots on his PCs and using any hardware I want, so what do I know.

BTW I'm betting that Apple will end up going AMD since Intel has basically crippled performance on their mobile devices by locking out Nvidia. It'll be hilarious to see the same guys that talked about how superior Intel was do another PPC>>>Intel flip flop if it happens. Gotta love that RDF!

What walled garden am I in exactly? Citation please? Oh right no citation, because there isn't any. MP3 plays just fine on Linux as well as Windows. How's that iTunes Linux client working for ya? Oh right, there isn't one. BSD? Nope. Windows? BWA HA HA HA HA...Biggest pile of shit since the old Real Jukebox is iTunes for Windows, and a GREAT example of the hypocrisy of Jobs since it uses NONE of the underlying OS tech, which is of course one of the things he screams at Adobe about with regards to Mac.

So accusing somebody of being in a walled garden because they use MP3s (Which BTW FYI, thanks to Lame sounds great, uses less resources and gets better pretty much all the time. Can you say the same?) is like standing 5 feet deep in shit and laughing at someone outside the pit "Oh look, you got a little poo on your shoe!" so give me a break. With MP3 I'm not locked in to any platform, no walled gardens here, can go anywhere, use anything, not a bit of problem here.

How's that Fairplay DRM working out on that non iCrap? Oh right, it don't. Ooops, sorry, having a bit of a sarcasm moment. I find it funny as hell though that only Apple buyers would brag about buying a device with nearly 100% markup. I just think that is hilarious! Oh and feel free to waste modpoint on me, fanboy rage just makes me laugh harder! meanwhile I am relaxing with my sandisk that is built like a tank, sounds great, and when the battery gets low while I'm out and about can be picked up at any shop and changed easily, all for less than $5 for a pack of AAAs. How's changing the battery on that new (and soon to be obsolete) iCrap working for ya? Oh right, can't do that either. BWA HA HA HA HA HA! You Apple guys, you so silly!

that's the second screen, the first can be seen here: European Internet Explorer users to get 'Browser Choice' screen from Windows Update

Im not going to argue controllers, because its pretty much fact that for a FPS, mouse / keyboard wins every time, even with the sticky aim that you find on console games.

(you can buy an adapter that allows you to plug in a keyboard and mouse to the 360; would love to try it out in MW2 to see how much better/worse off you become)

My issue is that if you already have a HD TV (~ 40 million homes based on this)there is little point to buy a computer for the purpose of gaming these days.

Part of that has to do with the American household dynamic of the TV room being the entertainment room.

Now, I definitely agree with you that its mainly the fault of the companies making games, but there is also little incentive for them to make games for PCs _except_ to showcase these new awesomeness cards.

If PC games are to make a comeback, major innovation is going to need to hit the PC market before that happens. (virtual reality, augmented reality, etc have a chance, but by the time they get commercialized, you will probably be able to run them from your cellphone with the new ATI HD10000 on it)

wow, you don't have much imagination, do you?

oh alright, lets go over the _possible_ reasons that people might want to modify their Xbox

- to fix security issues that microsoft/Xbox Live hasn't patched yet. e.g.
        http://www.totalvideogames.com/Xbox-360/news/Xbox-360-Website-Security-Flaw-Patched-7405.html
this wouldn't be possible if microsoft had banned these guys from researching a fix.

- to fix hardware issues that microsoft/Xbox Live refuses to fix
        http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/101070/court-filing-microsoft-knew-about-refused-to-fix-xbox-360-flaw.html
        http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/47671
so microsoft stiffed you with a dead box. why can't you fix it yourself? because inserting a different hard disc can already be considered a mod! yay!

- to make a game backup (which is 100% legal in many countries, if not everywhere)
        http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/141037

I can go on for a while... want some more?

YOU know that, and I know that, but would a prosecutor looking to advance his career know, or frankly give a shit, and what are the odds that 12 folks too stupid to get out of jury duty would know that? My mom is real civic minded and went when they called her for jury duty. She hung the jury 11-1. Why? Because with no evidence they were gonna send this guy away for arson because "he is Italian and Italians are in the mob and do that kind of stuff. Haven't you seen Goodfellas?"

So just because someone with a little brains and tech knowledge would know that doesn't mean you won't get dragged into court over it. Don't forget the MPAA accused a laser printer of file sharing, but that doesn't keep them from using that "evidence" in court.

Well, this guy was extradited from Australia to USA for copyright infringement

Australian pirate to be extradited to the United States

A ground-breaking ruling against an Australian man accused of pirating software, games and music worth over $50 million should have all pirates in the world scared. Hew Raymond Griffiths who went by the online name BanDiDo, has never been to the United States but will be tried in a U.S. court after the U.S. won the battle to extradite him.

Ouch.

Well, this guy was extradited from Australia to USA for copyright infringement

Australian pirate to be extradited to the United States

A ground-breaking ruling against an Australian man accused of pirating software, games and music worth over $50 million should have all pirates in the world scared. Hew Raymond Griffiths who went by the online name BanDiDo, has never been to the United States but will be tried in a U.S. court after the U.S. won the battle to extradite him.

Sometimes having a million choices helps, sometimes it doesn't. It'll be interesting to see which way this goes. I have my suspicions... ;-)

that no matter how hard they try to 'break' someones ability to do something, those someones will quickly circumvent that 'break' in the system, if they wish to. Makes me flash back to the days of the T-shirts with the DeCSS code written right upon it, and all the controversy about them. Also the tshirts that printed with the PGP (probably also gpg)code that were considered munitions by the US government. Makes me chuckle, makes me sad. It's a mad world, to quote Tears for Fears (though I think I adore Jules version more). There are plenty of other examples, from recording a videotape to another, using analog methods (which to me seems one of the easiest and first methods to break most digital methods of 'breakage', though the quality does suffer, in many peoples opinions.)
I really don't forsee a day when people will quite hacking the 'breaks' in systems. Isn't that what they are there for in the first place? Why not spend all those research dollars into the improvement of the platform itself? Or finding new exciting artists? Etc...

I guess you should get an OpenMoko. They are relatively cheap these days.

Well to answer the second part, the cheapest price for the OpenMoko Freerunner is currently $250 in the US. That's cheaper than $400 for the HTC Dream. The Palm Pre is only $100 with a 2-year contract, but no carrier-free GSM phone prices are available yet. So the Freerunner is a bit cheaper, but with much less hardware.

As for the phone itself, last I heard the development was continuing slowly and people were having issues with phone calls and getting the phone to hold a charge longer than a day. I mean, maybe, maybe I could be persuaded to use a phone without SMS, but if the battery has no life, and the thing isn't even meeting basic phone call levels, that's just too big a hurdle.

I'm really excited about the Palm Pre Challenge that's currently going on. It's a directed, focused push to get working phone calls with FSO on the Pre within a month:

What: Working voice call with FSO on the Palm Pre within one month.
  When: As soon as the Palm Pre GSM is available in Germany. (2009-10-13)
  Who: Daniel, Jan, Mickey, Simon and Stefan. Who else?

  2009-09-17 First draft for Challenge.
  2009-09-24 Palm an O2 announced the 2009-10-13 as Palm Pre launch date in germany. That means our challenge has a start date now.
  2009-09-25 Kick off some OE work for kernel and rootfs images.

This seems like a good, focused, reasonable goal that can be attained. I wish them luck!

According to this, Pandora and radio streams are.. STEALING!

It's still downloading music.

This is all very interesting considering it was just ruled that Yahoo online internet radio should be royalty-free and only have to pay normal radio licensing fees: http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/19017.cfm

Writing one yourself would be considered "manufacturing".

DeCSS code is protected speech http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/5020.cfm
I think compiling would be the manufacturing step. Writing it would still be speech.

"...a few people who received the movie as a special gift. Each version given away was missing a different section of video, thus enabling Reznor to keep track of those who betrayed him."

http://www.toplessrobot.com/2008/08/the_10_most_amazing_unreleased_things_ever_made.php

"$1 on all Internet connections" Yea and the income tax was only supposed to hit the top 1%.
"After a few years, phase out the fee (hum...)" Income tax was just to pay for WW2 right?
The Internet depends on everything (bandwidth, hardware...) always getting cheaper, taxation only ever increases, this is why taxation would kill the net. Rupert knows this.
I remember hearing that RIAA wanted to tax the internet too http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/14477.cfm
To me, this is like robbing Tesla Motors to keep GM afloat. Just let the failures fail and the successes succeed.

No, it's not. Censorship is alive and well all over the world, and there are many governments who would love to excercise censorship beyond their own borders.

You mean like the US? http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/2940.cfm http://news.cnet.com/2100-1033-236255.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_United_States

Here's a question: if we give the UN control over the DNS system, what happens to Taiwan's TLD? You only have to look at the last Olympics to know how China views Taiwan, they weren't allowed to compete as "Taiwan", they were "Chinese Taipei". If China had a say over which TLDs are allowed, the first thing they'll do is get rid of the .tw domain so that it is effectively censored worldwide. They can block access to .tw inside their own country now, but they don't have a way to block access to Taiwan websites inside the US or EU. That would change if the US gave the UN control of DNS. And that's only the most obvious example. I'm sure Russia would also appreciate the power if they could revoke Georgia's TLD the next time they decide to invade, by claiming that Georgia is part of Russia, or maybe they would set up a new South Ossetia TLD to bolster their claim that South Ossetia is not part of Georgia.

You miss my point. My point is that even if this were true, there are enough countries with TLDs around the world of their own that anyone would be able to get a soap box without any problem using another tld. TLDs are not a free speach issue.

The only reason that it appears that censorship is not an imminent threat is because worldwide internet censorship is not being practiced. The reason that worldwide internet censorship is not being practiced is because the US controls the DNS system.

You give the americans far too much credit. I worry about their propensity to go after gaming sites, mod chip sites, and sites like IcraveTV. The americans aren't saints by any stretch.

One would think there is a difference between a tool used to circumvent copyright, and a tool that fails to enforce the copyright rules.

I fail to see a functional difference

For example, if a DVD player fails to implement a region code, is that culpable under the DMCA? Or if a FOSS PDF reader does not have the code that checks for unprintable documents, a DMCA violation?

Yes and yes. Or if a DVD player fails to honor the "no skip" flag for movie trailers.

I'm trying to get my head around this. If a specification demands certain restrictions, and those are not implemented, then the implementations can be taken down under the DMCA...

Correct. In fact, this is the DMCA's sole purpose in life.