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Posted by Matthew Bendert in DRM, Music on September 29 2008
We’ve seen this before, but it still hurts every time. Walmart.com’s digital music service has announced in an e-mail to customers that it is going to shut down its DRM servers in about a week as it switches over to a completely DRM-free shopping experience. So, as of October 9, all you’ll be able to buy from Walmart.com is MP3s without digital rights management, but all the non-MP3 music you bought from them will no longer be transferable (without that obnoxious step of burning to CD and re-ripping them into MP3s).
While it’s nice to see the world’s largest retailer finally giving its customers what they want, those consumers that bought into the old ways of buying music are still getting hurt by the music industry’s previous unwillingness to give-up digital rights management. Sadly, this is a cautionary tale both to those of us who buy media, and other media outlets like the movie industry, that, in the end, DRM will only hurt you.
(via Ars Technica and Engadget)
Posted by Matthew Bendert in Copyright, Creative Commons, Software on September 26 2008
Borrowing aspects of Hungry Hungry Hippos, Creative Commons’ promotional materials and McKenzie Wark’s A Hacker Manifesto, the Free Culture Game by La Molleindustria has succeeded in doing what few have tried: simplifying the complexities of the debate over intellectual “property” into a flash video game. Your job is simple, just use the blue copyleft symbol to feed an information hungry populous fresh ideas from the Commons before the evil “Vectorialists” pull those ideas into the Market and rot the brains of your little people with copyrighted, commoditized ideas (turning them into grey automatons, it seems). Overall, the game play is relatively simple and keeps you on your toes, particularly for a game that’s so obviously an attempt to push ideology.
The Free Culture Game: only you can save the world from mind-numbing copyrighted content.
While we here at Copyleft: the magazine are all for attempting to change people’s perceptions of intellectual “property”, it is clear that the Free Culture Game has its downsides. It clearly promotes the theory of the Commons, that the free flow of ideas will create more innovation while commodification of information stifles creativity. However, the game definitely simplifies the idea of copyright, stigmatizing a concept which is, essentially, the basis upon which Creative Commons licenses are based. Without copyright law, there is no way to enforce Creative Commons licensing (or GPL, GNU or any other of the myriad free licensing regimes out there right now). So, while we applaud the effort as another fine attempt at cultural hacking (and a well crafted time waster), we wish there was a better attempt to push people toward more solid information, instead of putting something out there that, if the RIAA had done it, we would have immediately labeled propaganda.
(via Boing Boing)
Posted by Matthew Bendert in Music on May 5 2008
While there’s been a lot of coverage of this one over the past week, I think it is worth another look. According to numerous news sources, the judge in Atlantic vs. Howell, a long running RIAA file-sharing lawsuit, has declare in a preliminary opinion, that the RIAA’s contention that simply having files available on KaZaA does not constitute a violation of copyright. So, if the RIAA does try to take this case to trial, it would need to prove not only that the Howell’s, who are husband and wife co-defendants in the case, not only had a KaZaA account that had music shared on it, but that someone downloaded said music and that the defendants are responsible for making that download possible. Given the Howells’ brutal honesty so far in the case about their lack of tech-savvy with regards to the workings of KaZaA and the fact that they were using it to distribute non-copyrighted works of an exhibitionist nature (that’s what the internets are for, right?), this preliminary statement is being set up by many as the gold standard for how to handle this sort of case. The case is expected to go to trial in September, so we’ll see what happens between now and then.
(via Ars Technica, EFF, et al)
Posted by Matthew Bendert in DRM, Microsoft, Music, Plays4Sure, Software on April 27 2008
In a move that has riled even the most levelheaded of bloggers out there, Microsoft has decided to shut off the authentication servers for its dead MSN Music service, essentially flipping the bird to anyone who bought music from them. The nuts and bolts go something like this. PlaysForSure requires an authentication key to play music files and you have to have a new key every time you move a file to a new device or computer. Without the servers, which are expected to be shut down on August 31, consumers will no longer be able to move music to their portable audio players or any other PC, essentially condemning them to leaving the files on whatever computer they bought them on. This includes making it impossible to play that music if you upgrade your OS as well (possibly to Linux, just out of spite). That’s right, the DRM scheme that promised to be better than iTunes (but just barely) by allowing you to move your music to a bunch of different music players now can’t even do that. The only option, as Ars Technica pointed out, is the same bad one that is available to most people stuck in a bad DRM nightmare: burn all your music to CD, then re-rip. Weak.
(via Ars Technica and Wired)
Posted by Matthew Bendert in Mozilla, Software on September 20 2007
For those of you who have a penchant for pre-Outlook e-mail clients, the folks over at Mozilla have a treat for you. Eudora has been resurrected from the not-so-dead and, with the blessing of Qualcomm (who owns the rights to the venerable piece of e-mail software), Mozilla has relaunched it under the code-name “Penelope”. Essentially, Penelope is Mozilla’s Thunderbird e-mail client with a user interface that looks like Eudora. Best of all, it is all open sourced, so it will be free for all (in both the money and rights sense of the term). Of course, there are plenty of other skins out there for Thunderbird, but Eudora does have a certain late 1980’s je ne sais quoi. Qualcomm has publically stated that all future versions of Eudora will also be open source, so there’s one more open and free alternative to proprietary and buggy e-mail software (you know who you are).
(via MozillaWiki and the Washington Post)
Posted by Matthew Bendert in Google, IBM, Microsoft, Open Source, OpenOffice.org, Software on September 19 2007
We’re big fans of OpenOffice.org here at Copyleft: the magazine, and it appears that we are not alone in our open source office software love. Combining the pure open sourcey goodness of OO.org and its own Lotus Notes code and branding, IBM launched Lotus Symphony this week. The software suite (get it? “Symphony”… “suite”…. it’s funny!) includes three apps, Lotus Symphony Documents, Lotus Symphony Presentations and Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets, which are equivalent to OpenOffice.org’s Writer, Impress and Calc and Microsoft’s Word, Power Point and Excel. As with OO.org, IBM is letting you have these free of charge (though it looks like you have to sign up for an IBM.com account). These “productivity tools” are also being fully integrated into the latest version IBM’s popular Lotus Notes.
Perhaps just as important is IBM’s adoption of the OpenDocument Format (which both OpenOffice.org and Google Apps also use). Given that Microsoft’s Open XML was recently rejected by the ISO, which adopted OpenDocument Format as a standard earlier this year, IBM’s decision to stick with the open source crowd appears to be a solid one. Furthermore, IBM has also announced that it is going to release some of its Lotus code for use in OpenOffice.org’s productivity suite, allowing for an even more versatile OO.org in the not so distant future. It remains to be seen, of course, if anyone can topple Microsoft Office’s dominion in the world of office apps, but with IBM getting in the game and putting its Lotus muscle behind the OpenDocument Format and OpenOffice.org, the odds just got alot better.
(from OpenOffice.org, CNET, and IBM)
Posted by Matthew Bendert in Copyright, Creative Commons on September 18 2007
There appears to be a new standard emerging for tagging documents and extracting real information that is usable across different platforms. The World Wide Web Consortium has put forth GRDDL (and yes, it is pronounced “griddle”) as a sort of Rosetta Stone for translating all the different flavors of microformats, XML, RDA, HTML and many other acronyms as well.
Interestingly, Creative Commons has jumped on this little innovation as a new means of embedding copyright information in a widely readable fashion. Could this be the end of all those little links to CC’s licenses? We doubt it. But GRDDL does hold the potential to allow for searching via embedded tags, allowing the possibility of searching the entire web for Creative Commons licensed content (instead of having to search tags on every individual site). The implications are intriguing, but we’ll have to see how quickly this new scheme is adopted.
(via Creative Commons and W3C)
Posted by Matthew Bendert in DRM, Music on September 11 2007
Latest news in the death of DRM comes from the UK, where 7digital.com is offering Pink Floyd’s entire catalog DRM-free and at a massive discount. Floyd is, of course, celebrating the 40th aniversary of the launch of its first album. Apparently, 7digital is also discounting much of Floyd’s catalog by a cool quid and 50p down to £5.49 (that’s about a $3 discount to $11 for Dark Side of the Moon on this side of the Atlantic). Just one more sign that DRM is not necessary to ensure record company (or artist’s) profits.
(via Pocket-lint.co.uk)
Posted by Matthew Bendert in DCMA, Movies, YouTube on September 9 2007
Apparently sporting one of the busiest legal departments in the music biz, Universal was in the news again this week, this time suing video sharing site Veoh with “massive copyright violation” for hosting vids that might maybe have Universal’s copyrighted audio or video. This case, not unlike the now legendary Viacom v. YouTube, has the makings of another nasty showdown between content distributors (Viacom, Google and YouTube) and those who claim to represent content creators (Universal, Viacom and the RIAA/MPAA). As with the YouTube lawsuit, Veoh claims that they aren’t responsible for what people upload since they respond to all DCMA take-down requests. Ironically, it has been relatively widely reported that Universal has never sent any take-down notices to Veoh, but instead went straight for the jugular. The way this one goes down is going to probably depend greatly on the results of the YouTube case. We’ll keep you posted.
(via Wired and Ars Technica)
Posted by Luc Gagnon in Amazon, DRM, Music on September 4 2007
The internets have been abuzz this weekend about the potential launch of Amazon’s new DRM-free music store in mid-September. The New York Post apparently broke the news from Friday that Amazon is thinking about maybe launching sometime around the week of September 17th-ish. This is still speculation at this point, as Amazon has been pretty mum about the whole thing, but everyone from Forbes to Engadget to your own Copyleft: the magazine is reporting on it, so it must have some kernel of truth, right? The timing seems right though: it’s the end of back-to-school and all those college kids should be getting their student loan checks in the next couple of weeks. Of course, according to the RIAA, they all steal music, so they’ll probably go spend it on beer (not that we ever did that… really…). Also gives Amazon some time to get the kinks out before the holidays get into full swing. As usual, we’ll keep you posted.
(via The New York Post)
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