Posted by CowboyNeal (31% noise) View
VerdeRana writes “I just heard the EFF‘s Cory Doctorow give this fantastic argument critiquing DRM. He makes a great case for why DRM is bad for society, business, and artists, why it simply don’t work, and why Microsoft (the audience for this talk) should not invest in it. Broadcast this far and wide, and maybe someone will listen.”
Same - by cubicledrone (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
Articles like this one follow a familiar pattern:
1) The history of copyright, complete with exhaustive descriptions of the piano roll and the Monarchy.
2) A sob story about some poor honest member of the global audience who can’t watch the latest Hollywood crap-fest because they don’t have eight copies of it arranged so they are never more than 10 yards from at least two of them.
3) Ringing, strident statements about how Anything can be copied(tm) do you hear me??!?! WELL, DO YOU??!?!?!?!?!!?!
4) The argument then swerves into the ever-popular “in the future, the Internet will make copyright obsolete and artists will all live in a Utopian paradise where everything is free, free, free like the book they spent 4,000 hours writing which is at this very minute available on 4,000 warezzzzzzz sites for your convenience”
5) This is usually followed by the standard “books are worthless, music is pointless, art is disposable, inspiration is a commodity” argument which offers the idea that because something can be cheaply copied, it has somehow become worthless.
Throughout each of these discussions, there is always support for “well, we’ll just copy it anyway” which is why this argument has long since lost even the remotest shred of credibility.
There is only one question that needs to be answered. Is there any set of conditions under which the “copy every last fucking bit on Earth” people will just pay for the fucking movie/book/CD/whatever?
We need a “truth-in-DRM law” - by dpbsmith (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
Consumers are not being told which devices do and which don’t contain DRM and therefore there is no opportunity for marketplace discipline to occur. By the time consumers understand what is happening, every new device will have DRM and it will be too late to “vote with your dollars.”
I recently saw a full-page ad in the Boston Globe for a Gateway (remember? the company that ran TV ads a year ago saying they support my fair-use rights to music) for something called a Media Center PC. My wife was interested and asked me to look into it. Go here and click on “What can I do with Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004” and it says:
“Watch your favorite shows, whenever you want. Record a single episode or capture an entire series. You can also watch a previously recorded show while recording a live TV program. With the new Media Center 2004, you’re able to record a TV show directly to a DVD so you can start your own DVD collection or take it on the road and watch it late.”
Only if you go here , click on ”>FAQ” and scroll way down do you learn some relevant details:
“Media Center uses a new file format called DVR-MS… Q. Can the file format used by Media Center be changed? A. No… Q. Can [they] be converted to another video format? A. At this time, [no]. Q. Can I edit Recorded TV files? A. Currently, [no].
Q. Does Windows® Movie Maker support the Media Center file format? A. [Not at this time].”
“Q. What is content protection and how is it used by Media Center? A. Content owners and/or broadcasters can set copy protection flags to indicate that a program is subject to content protection. When Media Center detects that this flag is set, it will protect the content by limiting the ability to copy and distribute the program. Q. Can protected Recorded TV files be watched on another PC? A. No… Q. Can protected Recorded TV files be played back on the same Media Center PC using Media Player 9 or other DirectShow-enabled applications? A. No… Q.
Can I record a TV show to my hard drive and then to a DVD using my DVD-R and play it on my home DVD player? A. No…”
Since few programs are currently using the broadcast flag, few consumers will discover these limitations either before they buy it or during the period when they could conceivably return it. DRM is currently in stealth mode. Like a virus that doesn’t release its payload until it has infected many PCs, over the next five years millions of consumers will buy devices with DRM and not even know it. Then, suddenly, media companies will start turning on their protection flags and it will be too late to do anything about it.
When I asked direct questions to Gateway representatives about whether I could “use it like a VCR or DVD recorder to record my favorite shows on DVDs” they assured me that I could. Essentially the reps seemed to know about the “what you can do” paragraph I quoted above, but not about the “funny file format” and “content protection” issues I summarized below.
You can’t blame them for trying - by Kombat (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
Companies dealing in intellectual property have never before faced this level of onslaught of piracy and infringement. This isn’t something that happened overnight - it’s been building up for years (although in recent years, it has accelerated greatly). While a lot of people criticise the methods they’re employing to try and protect their assets, few can offer insightful solutions that have solid financial reasoning behind them. We all just seem to assume that if you offered your property for $1/track, that piracy would vanish. Well, they took us up on that challenge, and piracy hasn’t vanished.
These people/companies are getting desperate. Sure, I don’t think DRM is a silver bullet either, but it is at least slowing the problem until they can figure out a better, long-term solution.
The real thing we should be worrying about in all this is the laws they’re passing in the meantime, like the DMCA. While the companies themselves will evolve through this, the rights-stripping provisions enshrined in legislation will be much, much harder to phase out. Laws are rarely repealed, and THAT is what should concern us.
DRM - by mirko (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
The problem with DRM is that it’s got a name that people might consider making it the only right-management-related concept, now, DRM is not alone in its category and there’ll be other to take care about, like DVD region locking, etc…
DRM is specifically related to the locking and unlocking of media files dependent upon the licensing of that media.
DVD region locking is about blocking the usage of media outside of an “acceptable” zone.
DRM is completely moral, within the bounds of appropriate DRM. In fact, with DRM-enabled devices, you are able to back up your media to your heart’s content, providing that you actually paid for the media in the first place. Region locking is not moral, as it prohibits you from using media that you may have paid for in a system that only refuses to play the media because of the location of the player.
Posted by timothy (40% noise) View BGT writes “Gmail has for sure caused a furor by offering announcing 1 GB of space for free. But they are still in the beta stage and you cannot sign up for an account yet. Now India-based Rediff claims to be the first to actually start offering 1GB of space for free, with their Rediffmail service.” (Spymac mail users might disagree with the “first free gig” claim.) Signing up for a rediffmail account was straightforward; the site has an intelligent add-a-contact interface when you send email to a new address, but lacks the searchability and multiple-label capability of gmail.
Stability - by mrpuffypants (Score: 4, Funny) Thread
One of the biggest reasons that Google’s GMail is still more attractive is simply stability.
If you sign up for Spymac mail or Rediffmail you don’t have the backing of a major corporation that has an infrastructure in place to support future growth, investors looking for the company to *not* fold, and a dedicated staff just for your data.
Any fly-by-night place can buy a massive hard drive and start offering 1 free GB of mail, but if they run out of cash and fold then what happens to all of your mail in their old system? At least with google there is a pattern of longeviety that seems to ensure your data will be protected for a long while.
Indie-Mail - by KalvinB (Score: 4, Interesting) Thread
has been free from the beginning (April) and has never had a limit on the storage. Claiming 1GB is just an oversell. It also features the ability to search e-mails.
It also sports IMAP, POP3, SMTP (with alternate port for those with port 25 blocked), and web-access with SSL. And no ads. It’s supported by Icarus Independent which uses AdSense.
Anybody with a weekend to spare, Mercury Mail and some talent can put together a free e-mail service. The web-mail front end uses Apache 1.3.x, PHP, MySQL and OpenSSL. It just parses the files Mercury uses. Simple and secure. Mercury has built in web-mail support but I’ve never used it. I prefer having the flexibility of writting my own front end.
Ben
Bollywoodmail - by toupsie (Score: 4, Funny) Thread
I would switch to Rediff in an instant if they can turn my spam into a music and dance number with a large ensemble cast.
How about a 2GB account? - by lortho (Score: 4, Informative) Thread
Some folks have already tried to outdo gmail/spymac et.al. on the ‘bigger is better’ kick. Aventuremail recently offered 2GB accounts for free (and still appear to if you go to their site), but they apparently bit off more than they could chew and are no longer accepting new registrations (though they will certainly let you try, for marketing purposes - if you try to sign up for one now, they’ll take you through the whole process, then tell you you’re more than welcome to a 3GB account for $22USD/year).
and what are the odds… - by 222 (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread
That any of these new 1gb webmail companies will be around in 3 years? Google has proven staying power, and thats where my moneys at. (quite literally, heh. I actually shelled out 25 bucks for 2 gmail accounts.)
I signed-up for an account today. That will come handy when I'll move in August: I'll redirect to this address all the newsletter I currently subscribe to. No messages lost!
