Cardboard Spaceship

Most Excellent DRM in Vista Summary...

I came across this article on the DRM in Vista.  No much wonder it is late.  First they had to build it, then they had to break it. 

What this fails to understand is that the idea of a file, a computer, and a user are all metaphors.

001100011001010101100111111000011101010101010100001111100001

All the information is binary, and in the same environment, it is like asking someone to lift themselves by the bootstraps.  The notion of imposing the same metaphorical limits, like "this is a file of content, ", "this is an executable", is like asking matter to divide itself into fire and ice.  it may suit your metaphor, but it does not correspond to reality.

Ultimately they are accessible and treatable, and any pretense to the contrary is for Wall Street. 

No Go Zune

Wow, the Zune gets a bit of a roasting from this reviewer. 

Basically, it doesn't work well itself, and more incredibly, it does not work with the following MICROSOFT products:

Plays for Sure.  (How Ironic is that?)
Windows Media Player
Windows Vista.

What a complete clusterfuck. 

Moreover, the one interesting feature is the WiFi, and that is so crippled that its a miracle that they bothered to include it in the box at all.  Anybody in Taiwan or Japan who make a fuck up this big would be fired on the spot, instead the moron responsible for lauching this piece of crap has a large article about how he is the future of Microsoft, which has to be the career kiss of death.

Microsoft shareholders might ask why this loss maker is being funded with their profits?

DRM as a business issue is beginning to hit home, and I for one am glad of it.  You cannot make a computer, designed to handle digital information, not handle digital information, it is a contradictory design goal. 

Bite Me - DRM in Media Player

So it begins.  According to this (via Slashdot and all good tin foil hat sites everywhere.) Windows Media Player 11 will not let you back up your licences to WMP DRM music. 

In other words the music and other stuff that you buy or get will NOT be movable from that ONE machine.  And machines never crash or loose files, ever, no sir, nor become obsolete, not ever. 

Wow.  Soviet Photocopier. 

Who actually thinks that this is a good idea that customers are asking for? I mean, talk about blowback!  Your cuddly reassuringly expensive MS Vista, five years late, is going to EAT YOUR LIFE AND LOCK IT UP! 

I'd buy that for a dollar.  Not!

Microsoft Pulls a Wilson

Read this one.  Apparently, according to some tech support WGA AKA Windows Genuine Advantage will be able to nuke your PC if you do not have what MS considers a genuine copy of Windows.

I am slightly sceptical of this, because MS could not fail to see what a PR disaster this would be. 

But if it were true, then this would be another step towards the Soviet Photocopier.

Freedom, Apple Pie, and DRM

According to this rather startling editorial in the Washington Post, the *AA has succeeded in making itself an official arm of US Government policy, which I find a little... worrisome.

US economic interests are rightly served by the government policy, but this kind of intellectual property pressure is going to lead to predictable backlash in many countries, as seen with the fall out from the Pirate Bay raids.

Speech at Reboot from Piratbyrans

Following on from the last few posts on the pirate bay and allofmp3.com, etc, here is a speech from Reboot about the whole copyright and DRM discussion.  His characterisation of the problem as being about the availability of uncopyrighted meta-data is a valuable one.  Worth reading in full.

Avast, Pirate Bay is Back!

Like I said, and million others too, the Pirate Bay is back.  I don`t use Bittorrent as I am not keen on loading files that have no assurance as to what is in them onto my computers, However, this is a very clear example of why trying to plug the digital distribution of content is a pretty futile exercise.

In other words, the model needs to be reconsidered. I was thinking about this when I bought an upgrade from my old version of Paint Shop Pro to Paint Shop Pro X.  I downloaded it, and then had to activate it on my machine.  I have some minor issues with that along the "boiling the frog" perspective, but it seems bulletproof from a content protection point of view.   

(Comment on their website:  Switzerland is in Europe, at least geographically, so if I try to buy from their site, it refuses to offer me Switzerland in the country options, so I just said Sweden, only to be charged Swedish VAT on top.  Weird or what?  Also, it tried very hard to sell me the German version.  Here`s clue Corel, I live in Geneva, we speak French and I speak English, so the German version is no use.  *sigh* Managed it eventually, but it was not seamless let`s say.)

What is the difference then between DRM and activation?  Well, mainly that I accept that technically a program is going to run in one place, and that this can be controlled, which for music is not the case, I want it to be platform independent.  Also, if I have a serious problem with it, there is always SUSE or UBUNTU, and the GIMP. 

Point is, there are alternatives to the graphics programs, and there are alternatives to DRM infected high price sites, and very little incentive to avoid them.  Copyright law indicates that an artist should get paid for their work, and I agree with that, but enforcing it at a practical level is getting to be nigh on impossible.  Laws do not make law-adibing citizens, sadly. 

Sue Your Customers Until They Buy More

More DRM nonsense in the headlines.  The Pirate Bay, whom I have written about in the past have been searched and seized by the Swedish Police, who seem to have upset a few people on the way.  To be fair, they may have been leant on by others. 

The Pirate Bay does not seem to consider that this will be a fatal blow. 

In related news, the IHT has a very good front page article on Allofmp3.com, and how it is now the second most popular filesharing site in the UK after the ubiquitous iTunes. 

In other words, once again, the following points are being slowly and painfully worked out by the business interests that run the music and film businesses. 

1. Digital files can be easily shared.
2. People like convenience
3. People like cheap
4. People do not like unnecessary restrictions
5. Just because your country is prepared to joint the WIPO world view, does not guarantee a watertight world elsewhere
6. Suing your customers is generally a bad PR move

Really.  To which obvious truths we get the idea that our computers are not "all belong to us."  And who has the idea of doing something about it?  France.  Probably have the B-52s thrumming over the Champs Elysee any day now. 

What the Hell is America Doing to Itself?

This is the latest of the Uber Intellectual Property Acts to be proposed to the US legislative process.  Surely this cannot be serious?  It makes just about anything to do with free passage of information a potentially criminal act?

I have seen little commentary on this one, and that surprises me.  Is it a bust?  Seems not from the fact that some of it at least has already gone through the first stages. 

I have already heard that some organisations are migrating to avoid other legislation like Sarbanes Oxley.  Interesting how American thought about freedom of action has been revised lately.

Back from a Marathon Draft a Thon

It’s been another very busy week here in the spaceship, as I had to do a redraft of one of our main description documents from the solution that I work on at SAP.  The reason for having to redraft the document was that there is been a change from a version 4.0 to a version 5.0, and those you have been reading this blog regularly will know what that means.  In the end the document came out at about 40,000 words, not all of which I wrote last week, but I did have to re-read it and make sure that it made sense.  Needless to say that took a little bit of time, but at least it's done now.

Anyway, here I am back in the spaceship, looking through all of my RSS feeds, when I came across this one.  It's a point that often been made before, why does the tech industry let itself be shoved around by Hollywood, which really has much less commercial clout than the hardware, software and consumer electronics businesses?  Cory Doctorow also made another famous comment on this one when he said that the copyright lawyers compared with the monopoly lawyers that Microsoft had been fighting were “pantywaists.”

That’s fighting talk.