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Er, it has been around for copying and pasting for some time already. Thank Cory Doctorow for this one.

a razor blade thingie that is the size and shape of your entire face, lined with blades

Someone upthread pointed out the old Mad Magazine Trac LXXVI razor spoof.

MAD Magazine scooped the Onion by 25 years.
http://www.craphound.com/images/madprescientrazor. jpg

This talk by Cory Doctorow is a good start.

DRM is a reality and to deny this is to be simply ignorant of current trends in media playback software/hardware stacks.

... Cryptography - secret writing - is the practice of keeping secrets. It involves three parties: a sender, a receiver and an attacker [...]. We usually call these people Alice, Bob and Carol. [... A few explanations of cipher, ciphertext and key] In DRM, the attacker is *also the recipient*. It's not Alice and Bob and Carol, it's just Alice and Bob. So Alice has to provide Bob - the attacker - with the key, the cipher and the ciphertext. Hilarity ensues.

My biggest fan writes:

Ripping with iTunes does not add DRM to your music. Ripping with Windows Media Player can add DRM to your music, but it's a choice you are given very clearly when you first rip a CD with it.

As if anyone can rip their CDs and transfer the results any number of times to any device on either system. If that were true, the world would be a better place because DRM would not be DRM.

Not having either iTunes or WMP, I have to defer to what others report. For WMP and iTunes, I trust Cory Doctorow of the EFF and my own friends. For an updated look at where WMP has gone, I'll refer you to previous posts quoting the Washington Post review of ViiV and WMP, which show things have gotten worse instead of better in the last two years. Yes, my biggest fan is sure to know where that is, so I don't even have to look for it.

Doctrow has this to say:

I hit Apple's three-iTunes-authorized-computers limit pretty early on and found myself unable to play the hundreds of dollars' worth of iTunes songs I'd bought ... If I hadn't bought so much iTunes music that burning it to CD and re-ripping it and re-keying all my metadata was too daunting a task to consider, I would have been fine. As it was Apple rewarded my trust, evangelism and out-of-control spending by treating me like a crook and locking me out of my own music ...

...

I know who used to rip their CDs to WMA. You guys sold them software that produced smaller, better-sounding rips than the MP3 rippers, but you also fixed it so that the songs you ripped were device-locked to their PCs. What that meant is that when they backed up their music to another hard-drive and reinstalled their OS (something that the spyware and malware wars has made more common than ever), they discovered that after they restored their music that they could no longer play it. The player saw the new OS as a different machine, and locked them out of their own music.

He's being too nice to Apple about the rekeying and M$ about WMA formats. Friends have told me that Apple's restore is a royal pain that loses the metadata. If you've lost the metadata, you might as well re rip all of your CDs again. I know I don't want to go through that every three computers. The EULA is unilaterally changeable, so once they have you they can impose whatever they want. In the end they are going to impose what the RIAA wants, which is what M$ delivers today. Oh yeah, if the "choice" about adding DRM to your ripped CDs was so clear, how come so many people have gotten burnt that Doctrow can walk onto M$'s campus and wag his finger at them?

I'm going to skip the whole mess. WMA is not really better than MP3 and both loose out to ogg. Free software does everthing I want it to do with my music and comes without restrictions of anykind.

No, you want that other movie. We're talkin' about muthafuckin' liquids on a muthafuckin' plane, and there ain't a got-damn thing you can do about it!

But in this case, I think Tiscali did only one thing wrong in their letter The British Phonographic Industry Limited.... they should have added "please feel free to phone us to discuss this further"

I can just imagine the conversation now:

Tech support: my name is Sanjay, how can I help you?
<listens>
Tech support: so these people have been pirating your music? Have you tried reinstalling your modem drivers?

It didn't look like something that'll engage the attention of anyone that matters. By that, I mean that it isn't a particularly well-done, entertaining cartoon sequence that also raises questions or drives a call to action. It's boring, the characters are uninteresting, the "story" is only the message.

I tend to agree. Simplified, hyperbolic, and in the end, unengaging. I think the talk Cory Doctrow gave to the Microsoft Research Group about DRM is a much better way to introduce friends and relatives to the issues at hand. Of course, it requires a slightly longer attention span than what's required from the animation linked to in TFA, but I find that I often underestimate my non-tech friends ability to absorb information. Especially when it comes to issues that very much concerns them. Excerpt:

Here's what I'm here to convince you of:

1. That DRM systems don't work
2. That DRM systems are bad for society
3. That DRM systems are bad for business
4. That DRM systems are bad for artists
5. That DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT

And he does just that..

Protected Video Path" (PVP) support, including HDCP.
... why do they never listen.

I'm not a huge fan of Cory Doctorow, but he did a speech about copy protection (check it out here).

I'm paraphrasing, but one thing he basically says is that copy protection will always be broken, and that in the process it can lead people to places you wouldn't want them to go.

Can't fast-forward ads? People found a way around that. But now, they don't ever see your ads, not even the odd-one where they're vegged out and can't be bothered picking up the remote. Because they grabbed it off a P2P network and watched it from there instead.

So perhaps it is not THEFT in the traditional sense, but it is THEFT in the "I'm taking something that I'm not authorized to take" sense.

http://www.craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt
that should work... I already gave it a digg

1) Cory Doctorow showed that selling a tangible book isn't incompatible with releasing it online and opening it to modifications. Books don't need to be closed to let people make a living.

2) Many individuals are working on free support. Those that desparately need to feed their families are probably better off getting a day job. We don't need closed books to get the information out.

3) I'm not against people for wanting to sell something they've made. But the Ubuntu philosophy is about contributing free resources to the community. If you aren't into the philosophy, that's fine, but trying to profit off something you don't believe in is kinda disgusting.

Cory Doctorow has a short story on this very topic, called "Printcrime" http://www.craphound.com/000573.html.

Avast, ye swab perhaps you'd rather read about Arrrrs Technica's review of a keyboard

http://craphound.com/000187.html

The full text and a podcast version are there.

The podcast is well done, as well, evn if the reader can't do accents!

I like Corey's work, but it's so based in contemporary issues I do wonder how quaint it's going to seem in not too many years!

Some quick links I dug up, several of his talks available on his podcast will bring up itunes as well.

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/11/itunes_update _spies_.html

http://www.craphound.com/msftdrm.txt

Well, in Cory Doctorow's 0wnz0red, I think it did.

See Antispam group rejects e-mail payment plan for more reactions.

I had to read the story twice before realizing it wasn't a hoax.

While charging for reliably sending e-mail may be a good way to fight spam, putting the onus on the sender to pay isn't that great an idea.

I run an opt-in, non-profit, ad-free announcement list, for example. I just checked and there are 521 AOL and Yahoo addresses subscribed. I'm not going to pay $5 a day to reach those people!

I don't know how AOL filters work, but ideally a user could whitelist an address. But the pay-for-bypass method seems designed around reaching users that *don't* specify they want the "priority" spam.

Just how many boxes of this checklist does this plan grossly violate?

A tough part of any agreement like this is, just like the article states, to actually get people to work together and provide access. There is an interesting perspective on how it might need a radical group who do it for kicks in Cory Doctorow's novel "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town" to get things moving.

Personally, I think a time will come when WiFi access is very common, and some kind of roaming agreement between providers will cause your access to be metered by your ISP wherever you are.

Trivia: Did you know that practically the entire Internet infrastructure in Haiti is wireless?

http://craphound.com/000187.html

(with links to a podcast version as well)

Wikipedia was wrong -- he lives in California (source: http://craphound.com/est/about.php)

I first got a mail from Graham Linehan back in August of last year (he'd been given my details by Cory Doctorow - okay, not much more namedropping, I promise) and I jumped at the chance to help out - Father Ted and Big Train are two of my favourite-ever TV comedies.

He sent the scripts and I eventually sent a couple of notes back with a couple of minor corrections, but I really didn't need to do much at all; the humour in the show comes from really good character comedy, and the IT aspect is (quite rightly, IMHO) just a sideline thing. Roy and Moss bear slightly more resemblance to real-world sysadmins than Ted and Dougal do to real-world priests, but only slightly. As with Ted, the joy is in exggerating the silliness of the situations.

It was in building the set that the fun really started, and I need to get Sean to participate in the thread here as I recommended him for the job of gathering as much fun techie crap as possible as well as looking after the on-set PCs. Having visited the set once, I can tell you he did a fantastic job. There are so many wonderful little references and rare bits of kit lurking in the messes (British geeks in particular are in for a treat). Plus, thanks to Danny, there are EFF stickers everywhere.

Make sure to tape/TiVo/torrent it - it's a great show, fun and silly, with lots of easter-egg treats for geeks.

And besides, maybe if they did force everyone to use DRM, it would stop the whole "buy 10,000 email addresses for $10" kind of privacy violations we see rampantly all over the US.

No, it would make such privacy violations worse. DRM is all about _other people_ controlling your computer, and your data. This is compatible with neither privacy, nor security. EFF is a good place to read about this. Cory Doctorow has discussed this in depth as well (an EFF fellow).

A similar idea plays a role in Cory Doctorow's novel, Eastern Standard Tribe.

This sounds like an element from the plot of Cory Doctrow's Eastern Standard Tribe where all users of a highway system will be able to access each others music as long as they're on the same road at the same time, a real information superhighway.

I found this article, the transcript of a speech about DRM, I realize that this is preaching to the choir, but the points raised and the reasoning make lots of sense. http://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt

http://www.craphound.com/podcast.php Cory Doctorow is an award-winning science fiction author who reads his stories in podcasts. Audio only, though.

somewhat familiar design...

DRM does NOT and will NOT hold.
If you can get some new über format encumbered with DRM, the same file but *cleaned* will be available for net leechers....

For example check the first HD releases of DVD movies (lie Terminator 3 extreme edition).
It's was pretty new & better at the time, with HD (1080p ?) video content stored on a standard dvd as WMV, *BUT* DRMed to the bone (need to acquire a license on the net every other day, must connect from U.S....)
Well folks have been tinkering with a japanese anti-WMV-DRMv2 soft and now easily manage to remove the DRM.
So now the file you can get on p2p is the same exact pristine video *WITHOUT* DRM.

As TFA says, it's obvious that the only persons not affected by DRM are freeloaders, in this case:
  * you buy the extreme edition, you get f*cked with a brain-dead copy of a movie
  * you install azureus, you get a next gen video file that can be played on *any* platform...

Now i know:

  * I'll never buy next gen dvd if they work like that,
      (what's the use for a disc that can only be played in a windows-based, internet-connected, PC platform ?)
        provided the majors come to an agreement on their prefered DRM scheme in the near future, and actually release some HD content on disc, which is not so sure right now...

  * We can get HD media for free with no hassle rigth now

Media Giants, Get A Clue !

On a side note, the tools to remove DRM are not reserved to tech savvy people, granted the drmv2 remover i mentioned above is horrible to use, but if lots of people feel a need to use it, it'll become a snap.
DeCSS, for example, was in the beginning reserved to linux geeks but quickly made it's way to *every* dvd copier, like the worldwide-used dvd shrink...

Oh, and BTW, if you need to be more persuasive against DRM, as someone posted before in this thread, reread the excellent speech to MS By Cory Doctorow

I wish some of the entertainment industry execs would click that link and get a fucking clue.

Clearly, the future will be based on whuffie.

See those ads:

http://craphound.com/images/wowdanddad.jpg

and the ensuing website from Wizards...

http://www.wizards.com/gamenight/default.asp?dcmp= BAC-DNDGAMENIGHT

You can download them on his website.

I buy all my content, I spend lots of money on CDs, movies, and digital downloads from iTunes, why should I suffer because of a Chinese pirate who burns Revenge of the Sith from a copy that came from an internal studio source? Nothing I could possibly do, save either downloading the same copy or going to Bejing, makes me part of this situation and yet I have to deal with DRM. DRM doesn't protect media from an intent hacker or media from another internal source, instead it makes me jump through hoops to do things I used to be able to do. No one will win with DRM, content will still be stolen, but now customers will lose rights they once had. Chinese pirates will, of course, make mountains of money.

You should check out this speech by Cory Doctorow about why this is so.

I can't be the only person whose first thought was of Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe, can I?

Not that this has anything to do with music...but it's certainly a step in the direction of Doctorow's future.

The reasons for ...[the ebooks commercial failure]... are numerous and pretty easy to rattle off:

        * E-books can be physically uncomfortable to read (whether you're sitting at a desk looking at a monitor or squinting at a tiny PDA screen).

        * They're not portable if you have to read them on a desktop computer; if you read them on a laptop or PDA, you can't read if you run out of power.

        * There's a number of often incompatible formats that the files come in.

        * And the user's ability to access the book's content is often restricted by various digital rights management technologies. (It's notable that the Baen Free Library, one of the more successful e-book outfits, gives away books that are DRM-free -- and, for that matter, free as in beer. I guess it's easy to be successful when you don't expect anyone to pay you!).

1. Project Gutenberg books
2. Other public domain books
3. Downloaded from P2P apps

I think it was slashdot that first referenced this speech Cory Doctrow gave to a Microsoft audience about DRM:

http://www.craphound.com/msftdrm.txt

Briefly, he urged that the digital-media market would go to the machine that 'plays everybody's records' - urged them to give up on hopeless DRM and indeed break everybody else's with their players.

Wonderful set of anti-DRM arguments.

Well since DRM is by design broken it wouldn't matter much. More info here: http://www.craphound.com/msftdrm.txt

As several others have pointed out, being an author is not the same os being an IP advocate. I'd strongly advise reading Cory Doctorow's point of view on this... I'm too lazy to find a ref right now, but he includes it at the start of the electronic versions of his book (get the latest at http://craphound.com/someone).

As a personal example, being a D2 fan I've actually read a fair few things you've written online, but without a recommendation I probably wouldn't buy anything you've published for sale. No, it's not because I've got anything against your writing (quite the opposite), it's just that there is so much out there that I want to read first. Cory Doctorow used to be in the same category until I downloaded and read the above novel... he's moved up significantly up my list, and I also recommend him strongly to friends.

Of course, the obvious retort is that I could just download his next novel too. I may indeed, but having a physical book has many advantages that an elctronic copy lacks, such as ease and comfort of use.

I think it's fair enough that you're sticking to a traditional model; it certainly has it's advantages. However, for your own good and, I would argue, the good of society as a whole, I'd advise broadening your horizons in this respect, and at least consider the other possibilities.

Cheers,
Noims

Incidentally, despite appearances, I am not affiliated with Cory Doctorow in any way *:)

Perhaps the statement is a logical fallacy when it comes down to it, but my experience has been that most people who go through the trial by fire to become bona fide authors are pretty firm when it comes to intellectual rights. In fact, I don't think I've met a single pro author who isn't. For that matter, part of being a professional author is understanding that you make your living through your royalties, and it is therefore very important to protect them.

Cory Doctorow might disagree with you. Much of his success is arguably down to releasing his books under a creative commons license for free online.

In his speech Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books he points out that releasing free electronic copies of books has been shown to increase sales dramatically. In other articles he's written on BoingBoing, he argues that the best thing an author can get is exposure and word-of-mouth advertising; and releasing your books free online is a very good way of achieving that.

Cory Doctorow is also a representative of the EFF, if memory serves, and is certainly very critical of the RIAA. Nor is he alone in his views. Protecting your rights is all very well, but if giving up some rights means that more people know of your works, you'll make more money in the long run.

errr...

Tribe, Tribe.

damn freudian typos.

But I just blew my last mod point.

43 folders just ran an article about making one big text file, which followed up on an O'Reilly post on the same topic. Bottom line is that one thing all productive geeks share is that they stay organized by just adding stuff to a plain text file. It is a good life hack, which is intrinsically cross-platform & easy to use & small.

Cory's famous for doing the book version of this, distributing his books for free as a means for getting promotion.

http://craphound.com/

I caught his talk on it on Friday night. He said that the normal way people get to read an author is to buy the book in a shop, but the shops only carry books from known authors....

In the interest of spreading "link-love": How can you discuss Cory Doctorow without even linking to his site or mentioning that he's an editor at BoingBoing?

I just finished reading Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town last night. (Good timing, eh?) Not only that, but I read the whole thing on a palm pilot for free with permission, which made me feel better than all the books I've read on the thing without permission. Anyway, it's pretty good, but I'd say Doctorow earlier works were stronger. The "unconventionalness" was sort of it never really seemed to get explained or justified. I guess that was probably the point, but I got to the end and felt like there was still more story that I missed out on. I guess I felt something similar at the ends of his previous novels as well, but they just seemed more self contained.

Anyway, check out Eastern Standard Tribe and his first novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Both of these are also available for free download from the above linked sites.

I just finished reading Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town last night. (Good timing, eh?) Not only that, but I read the whole thing on a palm pilot for free with permission, which made me feel better than all the books I've read on the thing without permission. Anyway, it's pretty good, but I'd say Doctorow earlier works were stronger. The "unconventionalness" was sort of it never really seemed to get explained or justified. I guess that was probably the point, but I got to the end and felt like there was still more story that I missed out on. I guess I felt something similar at the ends of his previous novels as well, but they just seemed more self contained.

Anyway, check out Eastern Standard Tribe and his first novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Both of these are also available for free download from the above linked sites.