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Rather than try to prevent people from copying or sharing music with drm, Microsoft has patented a watermarking procedure that will allow them to tag music with IDs that are very hard to remove.

First take: this is bad, bad news. While Ars Technica believes that this could help to get rid of the much hated DRM, I believe the replacement is far worse. Now instead of merely being annoying in preventing you from copying a CD, the RIAA will be able to track music by ID to see where (and who) it came from. If your son shares a song online that's from your CD collection, you will be much easier to find and prosecute.

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Stolen from Schneier (but always credited), three articles by Cory Doctorow on DRM. My favorite tag line:

Digital rights management is a lie concocted to bilk the entertainment industry out of a fortune - it's time to wake up.

That is the truth. I could almost feel sorry for the industry, if they weren't using copyright lawsuits.

Cory is a guy who gets it:

Not one of them has ever stopped the widespread, unauthorised copying of media. Not one of them ever will.

Sounds like something something I might have said once. You would think these companies have at least one IT person both smart enough to realize this and gutsy enough to tell management.

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Today, I read an article that takes a look at the members of congress who are speaking loudly about copyright issues and noticing that most of them have had fairly significant campaign contributions from the RIAA and the MPAA (both well know organizations who attack individuals for alleged copyright infringement and supporters of the much hated DRM technology).

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This article is a treasure trove of historical information about the battle between consumers and copyright holders in P2P and DRM.

A bit about the attitude of the market:

Rhetoric about internet democracy aside, the point of interest was that such a huge number of people had no problem with copying and sharing movies, that they regarded it almost as a right.

A bit about the Media companies' "shame on you" campaign:

The strongest moral card they hold is that illegal downloaders are ripping off the artists. This, however, is the most shamefaced hypocrisy imaginable. Media companies have historically been the biggest sharks going, pressuring artists into exploitative contract deals that cut them out of most of the money and limit their creativity. Their argument seems to be, "Buy the disc or else your favourite singers and actors will be sleeping in the gutters."

A bit about DRM:

Trying to control the technology itself only breeds resentment and the kind of reaction seen on Digg as a hacker took the power into his own hands and shared it with the world.

A bit about reality:

Critics point out that illegal downloads hit smaller, independent companies the hardest as they depend on direct sales. This may be true but it only suggests another economic model. Maybe artists should be selling for themselves directly. And if an artist has a song that’s downloaded illegally by 5 million users, they now have 5 million fans. That translates into lots of concert tickets. Canadian artist Leslie Feist was shocked to hear American audiences singing along to her new songs – the album hadn’t yet been released in the US. When she asked her fans how they knew the words they yelled back: Illegal downloads!?

Nice.

Keeping media open when it needs to be

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A lot of the newsletters I subscribe to and groups that I follow are making more noise about this. The main point, from Defective by Design's e-newsletter:

The Department of Justice has drafted this outrageous legislative proposal that threatens ordinary Americans with jail time and the sort of property forfeiture penalties applied in drug busts for P2P users, mixtape makers, and mash-up artists. The law would stiffen penalties for "attempted infringement", basically removing the requirement that the government or Big Media companies actually prove that infringement occurred. The IPPA would also authorize massive wiretapping to investigate copyright infringement by individuals. The government has plenty of tools to investigate and prosecute large scale criminal enterprises engaging in bootlegging, the IPPA will target every citizen.

The main point here is that it makes copyright infringement a criminal offense and that it only has to be attempted! Think of all the people who've already been served with lawsuits (many who were clearly innocent). Now imagine that they no longer have to prove infringement, only attempted infringement. This makes their case far easier to fight. But now it's a crime so the punishment would be stiffer as well.

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Now that Apple is planning a DRM-free store, we can conclusively say that Steve Jobs wasn't just paying lip service. Right on.

Goodbye DRM

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Here's a neat article about how DRM is dying, but more importantly, how companies are realizing that searching for violators and charging them is far better than trying to implement DRM which doesn't work and ticks off customers at the same time. Duh.

Free Speech Flag

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This article is worth reading just from this tagline alone:

Last night, the AACS LA's attempts to keep an HD DVD crack under wraps backfired in a spectacular fashion. Pandora's Box is now wide open, and there's no going back now.

The problem with DRM is that they companies are doing this for entirely their benefit at the detriment of normal users. It's no wonder that the entire Internet community is against them. Now if we could only get that kind of response for RFID.

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How very interesting. This project was designed to strip the DRM from iTunes music so you can play them on any player or in any program you wish (as you are entitled to under fair use laws).

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From this page:

Most people don't care about DRM... until it interferes with the Right to Fair Use. If you buy any other product... be it a gun, a car, a chainsaw, a pen, or a knitting needle... you can do whatever the hell you want with it... because it is yours. DRM-protected content is the only product out there that prevents you from doing absolutely anything except for the original intent of the product. If I want to be able to move it to another machine that I own, shrink it for a handheld device, edit out the commercials (all things that the Right of Fair Use allows)... whatever... forget it. And THAT is what makes normal people mad about DRM.

Yup