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A Copyright Cop In Every Zune
Mike writes "As if the Zune wasn't already crippled and unpopular enough, now comes a story indicating that Microsoft may build a 'Copyright Cop' into every Zune. A future update of the software for Microsoft's portable media player will likely include a 'feature' that will block unauthorized copies of copyrighted videos from being played on it. The president of digital distribution for NBC, J. B. Perrette, said the plan is to create 'filtering technology that allows for playback of legitimately purchased content versus non-legitimately purchased content.' Of course there's no way to tell legitimate content that you create from 'non-legitimate' content, so this looks like just another nail in the coffin of the Zune." Update: 05/08 20:50 GMT by T : From Microsoft employee Cesar Menendez comes this categorical denial of any such filtering mechanism.
My guess is they'll troll through YouTube and BitTorrent looking for copyrighted stuff, taking a hash of it, and comparing stuff you download against the list of copyrighted hashes.
Of course, the obvious next answer will be a format-ripping program that performs some random permutations to the media, preventing any two copies from having the same signature...
John
An iPod does not require using iTunes. You can put Rockbox on an iPod and simply drag the music files directly onto the iPod mounted as a drive. There's also plenty of other programs that can read and write to an iTunes database.
This isn't quite true. Most music on iTunes is lower quality than a CD and in a different format. Burning it to CD results in a slightly lower quality yet and significantly lower than a purchased CD. Ripping it to a new format will depend upon what quality you normally rip content at, but it will be less than what is available on a purchased CD and worse than a purchased iTunes song.
That said, the quality may be acceptable, and in fact I don't have a problem with the audio quality of songs ripped in this way. I'd further argue that the way most CDs are mastered these days results in a much bigger hit to actual audio quality than anything Apple is doing.
3: The iPod only has DRM on it because Apple new they would get sued to fuck if they didn't, or if they went around allowing direct circumvention. By allowing copying to audio cd they avoid this via the fair use claim.This is just untrue. Apple not including DRM does not give them any real legal liability, even for contributory copyright infringement. Apple included DRM to get buy in from the RIAA. Without that buy in, the iPod would have had a much slower uptake and been less popular. They needed a way to buy and load mainstream music easier than going to the store and for that, they needed the cooperation of the RIAA... hence DRM. Fair use has basically nothing to do with Apple themselves.
4: A *lot* of available iPod content is not DRM'd anyway.This is true for audio, and Apple has been pushing hard to get rid of it, both for ease of use reasons to sell more iPods and because it is a potential antitrust issue.
Seriously, is there some sort of reality distortion field problem here where someone with seven or eight accounts that humps all over Slashdot shilling his own posts can happily get away with it, no repercussions? Screw the controls that this website has in place to prevent things like these, along with crapflooders, GNAA trolls and erotic stories about CmdrTaco and CowboyNeal?
There is a reason why his first two accounts are in negative karma hell, but he doesn't understand that people mod him down, not his opinions. As if criticizing Microsoft on Slashdot was reason to be modded down? People are tired of him, but he just blames everything on Microsoft, claims that anyone who disagrees with him "hates" him, and then proceeds to create seven or eight accounts, and reply to himself so that moderators think "wow, this gnutoo/inTheLoo/Erris/westbake/willeyhill/twitter/Mactrope fellow sure has a lot of friends who agree with him" and play the karma game to his full satisfaction.
Aside from my personal dislike of his "evangelism" style that does more harm than good to free software, that should not be allowed. I don't reply to myself pretending I'm someone else to see if I get modded up, I say what I think and I'm responsible for it. Within the community that is Slashdot, that means you are moderated up or down and deal with the consequences of that. The next time you find yourself getting stacked upon on a discussion thread by three people who sound exactly the same you'll see what the problem is with sockpuppets.
Anyway, it's just the internet, and some people take all this too seriously (probably including myself sometimes) but even here there are rules and an etiquette that people follow or things go the way of Kuro5hin and Digg.
(And now I'm sure he'll use one of those sockpuppets to mod me down like he's been doing the past few weeks with his gnutoo and inTheLoo accounts, which are the only ones that are not posting at zero or less for obvious trolling.)
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
U.S. Top Selling Computer Hardware for January 2007
Scroll down to the MP3 section. SanDisk only has 8.9%, but Zune is at 3.2% and the iPod is at 72.7%.
I can has sig?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Microsoft has already denied this: http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9938650-56.html?tag=nefd.top But since this is slashdot, let's just ignore it while there is an opportunity for MS bashing.
Fortunately Microsoft denies 'Copyright Cop' speculation. Of course, /. would never post an update (let alone call out that the article was speculation).