Slashdot Mirror


OS X Conference DRM Panel Video Available Online

gnat writes "Tucked away on the O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference presentations page are links to Quicktime video and mp3 audio recordings of the Digital Rights Management panel featuring Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News, Cory Doctorow of the EFF, and others. (My apologies for the sometimes shaky video--three Cokes for breakfast is the anti-steadicam)"

14 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. DIY QuickStream - QSS by djupedal · · Score: 5, Informative

    QT streaming from OS X only takes a few minutes to set up, BTW.

    Find out for yourself why these files are surviving the legendary /. effect? :)

  2. Format by 90XDoubleSide · · Score: 3, Informative

    The video is encoded with the H.263 codec, and the audio is encoded with the QDesign Music 2 codec.

    --
    "Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
  3. Re:The iPod *does* have DRM by Xenex · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Oh, the final component of the iPod DRM system: a small etching in the steel on the back of it which reads Don't Steal Music"

    No there isn't.

  4. Re:downloadable version? by Erik+K.+Veland · · Score: 3, Informative

    Wow... technology impaired slashdot-reader, that would be the day.

    Just alt-click the quicktime-link and you'll be fine. If that doesn't work, right click the quicktime-link and choose the equivalent of "Save file to disk...".

    --
    "I tend to think of OS X as Linux with QA and Taste", James Gosling, creator of Java
  5. End Quote by Perdo · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Technologies that can modified by end users, that is to say Open source are explicitly not allowed in contexts where digital streams are allowed to come into contact with them because you could change them to geek around the restrictions that are being put in by Hollywood. So this is also a proposal to ban open source.

    The technology companies, by and large going along with it. And this is why we are here today. We want to find out how it is we can shift the technology companies from a sort of duck and cover perspective to going on the offensive. Because when technologists, who are part of a 600 billion dollar American industry, go on the offensive against Hollywood, a 35 billion dollar American industry, THEY WIN.

    "Two really important things you can do, one is you can tell five friends. Cause most people don't know this is going on. Most people don't know that there are three separate onslaughts on the ability of technologists to build any device that they want to. right now, internationally, in congress and in the FCC. Right now, going on, that if they succeed will be the death of their industry. And tell five friends in the technology industry just let them know so they can tell five friends. So we need a burgeoning consciousness of this. We need a million Slashdot readers to actually care about it and not just natalie portman or hot grits. And the last thing you can do is... um.. you can.. Boy! I just blew my buffer. What is the last thing you can do?"


    ~ Cory Doctorow, Electronic Frontier Foundation

    --

    If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.

  6. Re:Considering it's a OS X conference... by 2nd+Post! · · Score: 5, Informative

    Alright, I'm being careful with my use of words.

    I own an iPod.

    As such, it's designed to make listening to MP3s easy. That means it's trivial to update, synch, and upload music to the device.

    I did not use the word 'copy'.

    It's also trivial to copy music with an iPod. It is an external firewire drive, and you only need to enable that option within iTunes.

    If you're bitching because iTunes itself does not allow you to synch from an iPod->iTunes, then you're complaining that Apple didn't design music offload capabilities into an MP3 player, which isn't strictly a requirement of an MP3 player. Clearly it's useful for an MP3 player to be able to synch; iTunes->iPod is trivial, just plug and forget.

    Synching from iPod->iTunes is not a function of an MP3 player any more than allowing an MP3 player to open your garage door. However, the capability to copy music, as I mentioned above, exists.

    Drag files from computer->iPod.
    Drag files from iPod->computer.

    Were you looking for something else, perhaps? Apple including a checkbox on iTunes, 'Download music from iPod'?

  7. OSS already has drm by Billly+Gates · · Score: 4, Informative
    Look here and here.

    If the big software houses that support drm see these projects, my guess is the will demand that both the sdrm and openimpm libraries be installed to prevent fair use on linux. We need to boycott these morons who are writing these software packages since they are doing nothing more then hurting OSS then helping it. If Linux software needs drm then apple will fall next and then will sun, etc. Very bad.

  8. Re:not just Mac OS X by hype7 · · Score: 3, Informative
    So far, most operating systems other than Microsoft Windows are giving DRM a cold shoulder. Windows is the exception, not the rule.

    In fact, it's hard to see how DRM could work if there were a lively, competitive market in operating systems, media software, and hardware. In some way, DRM can only work if Microsoft keeps 95%+ of the market, which is kind of scary, because it means that Hollywood is going to do what they can to support Microsoft's monopoly.


    You're looking at it the wrong way. At the moment, there are two OS vendors that make OSs designed for consumers to use with digital media - music, pictures, movies, etc. It's not MS vs all the other OS vendors - it's Apple vs MS. Those are the only two vendors that really count as far as DRM in the consumer space (which is what we're talking about).

    There's MS in one corner - pandering to the RIAA and MPAA - and Apple in the other, giving the beforenamed organisations the royal two-fingered salute.

    I know which side of the fence I'd rather be sitting on.

    -- james
  9. Re:Apple Laptop Keyboards Unsuitable for Unix User by Silverhammer · · Score: 5, Informative

    Blockquoth the poster:

    Apple laptops have built-in ADB keyboards. The ADB keyboard is broken-by-design.

    *begin Inigo Montoya impression*

    You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means...

    *end Inigo Montoya impression*

    ADB is a device bus, not a keyboard layout. Apple hasn't used ADB since it first introduced USB on the iMac in 1998.

  10. Re:you got me by Triv · · Score: 3, Informative

    I have a NEW ten gig iPod with a touchwheel and "don't steal music" isn't anywhere on it. Not that I think it would be a bad move per se, it's just not there.

    Triv

  11. Re:Apple Laptop Keyboards Unsuitable for Unix User by Espen · · Score: 2, Informative

    To be fair, the original poster is right about Apple laptops having ADB keyboards. The built in keyboard uses a ADB bus which is not in any other way available, not USB. Just scan the USB bus and you'll notice that there is no device listing for the built-in keyboard.

    Why this would be a problem I can't phantom.

  12. Re:More pro-Apple cheerleading and apologia by jneemidge · · Score: 2, Informative
    As the rest of the discussion notes, it's trivial to copy MP3's off the iPod with standard, included tools; there are plenty of freeware third-party solutions to do it, if you don't like the included tools.

    The only catch is that the included iTunes application only syncs _to_ the iPod, not _from_ it. This is a simple design decision, and hardly an unreasonable one. For example, iPhoto only syncs pictures _from_ a digital camera, not _to_ it. I can think of situations where it'd be nice to send pictures to a camera, but it's hardly common and they didn't choose to support it.

    The point is, no one "Forced" a "no copy off the iPod". It's trivial to copy from the iPod. One included application doesn't copy from the iPod, that's it.

  13. Re:Considering it's a OS X conference... by Melantha_Bacchae · · Score: 4, Informative

    seanadams.com wrote:

    > And at the same time, Apple implements a form of
    > DRM by crippling the iPod - you can copy songs
    > onto it, but you can't copy them off. I'm an Apple
    > fan, but this kind of BS undermines my faith in
    > them.

    The iPod does *not* have Digital Rights Management (restrictions management / rights manglement)! What the iPod has is very weak copy protection (its a FireWire hard drive, with a lot of third party apps enabling you to do what you want with it), and a sticker that says "Don't steal music." The sticker is really the important part, because Jobs believes that piracy is a behavioural problem.

    DRM is a different animal altogether. It maintains license records on what you are allowed to view/listen to. If you try to play a file whose license has expired, it will not let you (Microsoft's implementation will happily go out and buy you a license).

    DRM is a nasty beast, with dire implications for your fair use rights, privacy, and the security of your credit cards (in the case of Microsoft's version that spends your money for you, bugs in which might expose your credit card number or charge too much to it).

    The weak copy protection on the iPod is a logical extension of its use, easy to work around for fair use, and the bare minimum Apple needed to avoid having the record labels blast them for enabling piracy. It would be nice if it wasn't there.

    Really though, do you see keeping 20 gig of music files on every Mac you own?

    On December 14, 1996, Mothra resurrected a charred Apple sapling ("Mosura" 1996).
    On December 14, 2001, Mothra returned to see its fruit ("Gojira, Mosura, Kingu Ghidora: Daikaiju Soukougeki").
    OS X Jaguar: truly the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.

    G Countdown: 19 days (www.godzillaoncube.com)

  14. Re:Apple Laptop Keyboards Unsuitable for Unix User by jneemidge · · Score: 4, Informative
    The google.com link quoted by the original poster shows how to remap caps-lock as control under MacOS; I've done it before, and it doesn't result in any ill effects. The technique presented is to transpose the mapping from two key codes; I'm not sure in what way that could be described as a "horrible kludge". Many old Apple keyboards have locking caps lock keys; this is an annoyance, as you need to remove the locking mechanism.

    That said, I'm a Unix professional (kernel; device drivers, right now); have been for many years. My _entire_ professional life has been spent working on keyboards that have control on the lower left, and caps lock next to A. It is _entirely_ possible to use Unix with control in lower-right. I have small hands; I can still use control and not have any trouble reaching other keys. I'm currently typing this on an IBM keyboard that ships with RS/6000 workstations; control is in lower-left. My officemate's IBM PC-influenced keyboard (Windows key, etc) has control in lower-left; his Dell laptop has control in lower-left. One of my co-worker's IBM laptop? Control's in lower-left.

    Control in lower-right is an ISO standard; Apple didn't come up with it because of any desire to spite Unix users.

    Apple has been a Unix vendor for at least 14 years. Anyone remember A/UX? I do... loooong experience with it, including years as GNU ports maintainer when Apple was still persona non grata with the FSF. Anyone remember the workgroup servers running AIX? I wrote the serial driver. Any claim that Apple has been ignoring Unix users needs to take into account that Apple's been a Unix vendor for a very long time _and_ that they've now moved their entire platform to a Unix(/Mach)-based system.

    I do sympathize with muscle memory -- my current laptop has a key to the left of control (fn, for those who're curious). It was a bit of pain getting my finger to shift over one position -- about a week's worth. After that, all's well. You may have harder to retrain muscle memory.

    The most interesting part of the parent post is the reference to uControl. uControl remaps control to caps-lock _exactly_ the way the poster wants. It's free software (GPL). _If_ ADB were "broken-by-design" as claimed, uControl wouldn't be able to do this. If anyone wanted control -> caps lock remapping on the *BSD's, it shouldn't be hard to look at a piece of GPL'd software and figure out to, e.g., modify the X server to do the same thing.

    It seems to me that the poster himself has presented two solutions, one for Debian and one for Apple's own Unix product, that would let him use Unix on an Apple laptop with control where he wants it (assuming they work, and comments indicate they do). Why should it matter if these products need to resort to kludges, horrible or otherwise -- do you _need_ to know how your keyboard-mapping software works to be able to type? Should you _care_ how it works, as long as the keys do what you want?

    _Exactly_ what more do you expect Apple to do -- provide remapping software for *BSD? I understand that it might be nice for the builtin keyboard to be USB, but given that working solutions exist for two flavors of Unix, I don't really understand the urgency of a major hardware design change to fix a problem that it's already agreed has a ready fix available in software.