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Big Brother Lifetime Award Goes To Microsoft

Posted by timothy on from the he-ain't-heavy dept.

D4C5CE writes "Microsoft's ceaseless "success" in bringing instability, insecurity and breaches of privacy as well as a deplorable lack of open standards to almost Every Desktop on Earth has now earned them an "Oscar" for Data Leeches, the Lifetime Award for "outstanding mis-achievement" from the BigBrotherAwards 2002 in Germany. Microsoft's Data Protection Officer actually attended the ceremony to collect the prize (probably delighted that unlike the "laureates" of last year's event in Austria, at least he would not receive live cockroaches), and this unlucky winner took the opportunity to make some critical remarks on the company's communications regarding the Windows Media Player and Digital Restrictions (or, euphemistically, in his words: Rights) Management technologies which he deemed crucial for modern business models, rather than acknowledging that it's in fact not just the advertising but the approach itself which is fundamentally flawed."

4 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. The site in English by BrianWCarver · · Score: 5, Informative


    Why read a lousy Google/Altavista translation, when the site has an English version?

    --
    Like Digital Freedoms? Then donate to EFF before they're gone.
    1. Re:The site in English by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Go back and look genius, it doesn't have an English translation of the article in question.

  2. Re:Another troll article! by batkiwi · · Score: 3, Informative

    I run an xp machine with codeguide (java ide), outlook, outlook express, IE, and putty all the time. No performance problems or stability problems, and I haven't rebooted this machine in 2 months.

    "and a X server"

    My best guess is THIS is causing your problems. If you're running cygwin, it can REALLY slow down your machine over time in my experience.

  3. Re:Modern business models? by brianvan · · Score: 3, Informative

    DRM has the nasty side effect of being able to enact restrictions on consumers in favor of big evil content producing companies. Unfortunately, big evil companies have the right to do this as granted under law. Microsoft must think that they could make some sort of money through DRM, but I suppose that they should do "the right thing" and drop the whole idea altogether. You know, continue to make it easy for people to share content even if it's completely illegal.

    I don't know what to think here, but I don't think MS is the bad guy. If a company can provide a technology that would allow me to purchase the products I want in a way that keeps the copyright holders at ease, then I'm all for it. However, if I don't like the copyright holders, that's not the fault of software makers who try to create content protection systems... then again, I'm speaking as a heretic here, since MS makes such an easy villian in these parts...