For (the maintaining of) your viewing pleasure...
Or you reading pleasure, or your listening pleasure...
There's a handful of things going on out there in the world of DRM (Digital Rights or Restrictions Management, depending on how you want to frame it) that strikes me as a pretty big deal. Maybe it's because I know so many people who are content creators or who are content consumers... maybe it's because I just find it very interesting how unbalanced the playing field seems to have gotten between the business interests and the customer interests.
Read and think and talk about it.
The day the broadcast died
Today is the day that TV and radio broadcasters around the world (and digital video recorder makers like TiVo) dreaded would come. It's the day that someone married the RSS subscription protocol to Bittorrent in a way that turns the Internet into one big giant and free TiVo machine. Wrote Steve Rubel of the development, "Someone has figured out a way to subscribe to TV shows on Bit Torrent and pull them down as an RSS feed."
How to stop Hollywood and Congress from trampling on your constitutional rights
Enter (stage left) Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and something known as "the broadcast flag." Basically, the broadcast flag is a form of anti-piracy DRM designed to give broadcasters the ability to control whether their content can be recorded and how it can be recorded. For example, through the use of a broadcast flag, the only way to record Desperate Housewives might be through your TiVo box. Then, through the use of other DRM technologies in your TiVo box, the only way for that copy of Desperate Housewives to be viewed is with the same TiVo box that recorded it (in other words, you wouldn't be able to distribute it on the Internet with something like BitTorrent). The DRM technology can also control certain aspects of your recordings like how long they last on your TiVo box before they're automatically deleted and whether or not you can bypass the commercials. Such business-model protecting technology would be relatively useless however unless someone mandated its inclusion in customer premises equipment (TVs, set top boxes, TiVo-boxes, etc.). Someone like Congress and the FCC.
Sony BMG Recalls Copy-Protected CDs
AMSTERDAM (Reuters)-Music publisher Sony BMG, yielding to consumer concern, said on Wednesday it was recalling music CDs containing copy-protection software that acts like virus software and hides deep inside a computer.
Adelphi Charter on creativity, innovation and intellectual property
(Excerpt from Cory Doctorow's site)
The Charter is intended to be used as a litmus test by governments that are considering new exclusive rights over knowledge goods. These rights are usually granted without any evidence of their promised benefits. As my fellow drafter Jamie Boyle says, "it's as if the FDA made drug approvals by relying on speeches by pharmaceutical companies and looking at tarot cards."
There's a handful of things going on out there in the world of DRM (Digital Rights or Restrictions Management, depending on how you want to frame it) that strikes me as a pretty big deal. Maybe it's because I know so many people who are content creators or who are content consumers... maybe it's because I just find it very interesting how unbalanced the playing field seems to have gotten between the business interests and the customer interests.
Read and think and talk about it.
The day the broadcast died
Today is the day that TV and radio broadcasters around the world (and digital video recorder makers like TiVo) dreaded would come. It's the day that someone married the RSS subscription protocol to Bittorrent in a way that turns the Internet into one big giant and free TiVo machine. Wrote Steve Rubel of the development, "Someone has figured out a way to subscribe to TV shows on Bit Torrent and pull them down as an RSS feed."
How to stop Hollywood and Congress from trampling on your constitutional rights
Enter (stage left) Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and something known as "the broadcast flag." Basically, the broadcast flag is a form of anti-piracy DRM designed to give broadcasters the ability to control whether their content can be recorded and how it can be recorded. For example, through the use of a broadcast flag, the only way to record Desperate Housewives might be through your TiVo box. Then, through the use of other DRM technologies in your TiVo box, the only way for that copy of Desperate Housewives to be viewed is with the same TiVo box that recorded it (in other words, you wouldn't be able to distribute it on the Internet with something like BitTorrent). The DRM technology can also control certain aspects of your recordings like how long they last on your TiVo box before they're automatically deleted and whether or not you can bypass the commercials. Such business-model protecting technology would be relatively useless however unless someone mandated its inclusion in customer premises equipment (TVs, set top boxes, TiVo-boxes, etc.). Someone like Congress and the FCC.
Sony BMG Recalls Copy-Protected CDs
AMSTERDAM (Reuters)-Music publisher Sony BMG, yielding to consumer concern, said on Wednesday it was recalling music CDs containing copy-protection software that acts like virus software and hides deep inside a computer.
Adelphi Charter on creativity, innovation and intellectual property
(Excerpt from Cory Doctorow's site)
The Charter is intended to be used as a litmus test by governments that are considering new exclusive rights over knowledge goods. These rights are usually granted without any evidence of their promised benefits. As my fellow drafter Jamie Boyle says, "it's as if the FDA made drug approvals by relying on speeches by pharmaceutical companies and looking at tarot cards."