Slashdot Mirror
Online Copyright Round-up
newt writes: "Australia's Radio National has published a background briefing on the topic of Digital Copyright. The subject matter serves as a pot-purri of slashdot topics, neatly summarizing them into one coherent whole: Scientists revolting against online journals, Adobe e-Books, Licenses to Read, you name it. Audio in RealMedia format, plus a HTML transcript. If you want to educate someone who doesn't know what all the digital copyright fuss is about, this is an excellent starting point."
...is real-media. Great. I recently had the pleasure of installing real-player on a windows machine. It went something like this:
Real player: Please tell us your email address so that we can notify you of important spam.
NO THANKS
No really, we need your mail address
NOBODY@NOWHERE.INT
Okay then. Do you want us to send you important updates and spam?
NO
Are you sure about that?
YES
Right. Please choose how much ugly advertising and crap you want displayed when you run real-player.
NONE
Okay. I'll assume I didn't hear that and give you all of it anyway. Do you want us to send you updates and other important spam once in a while?
NO
Okay. Are you sure you don't want to not receive our updates?
NO... UH WAIT, I MEAN YES
Okay, you've been added to our mailing list. Do you want real-player to become the default application associated with every type of media in existence?
NO
Okay fine, we'll prompt you about that again later when you might be in a better mood. Now screwing around with your windows registry in ways we won't bother to ask you about... done. Please enjoy your new real-player. Do you want to give us money for the "plus" version of real-player?
NO
You sure?
YES
There is a new version of real-player available for only $29.95. Do you want it?
... I hope Real dies the horrible death they deserve.