Infinite Web Design

It’s simply not worth the trouble.

Ignoring the obvious ethical and social issues, DRM leads to an arms race that should never have started. And it is one that the DRM pushers are sure to lose. It costs loads of money to produce a DRM scheme, to try to implement it, to keep it updated when it gets cracked within a few weeks of each update, and then to support all of the customers who simply want to play their movie but can’t because you are “protecting” it.

There is a great discussion over at Ed Felton’s blog about the AACS cracks and updates. Basically it takes tons of time and money to stop movies from playing, inconveniencing paying customers, all because the studios are fixated on the possibility of losing a few sales to people who copy a movie and losing sight of how to get and keep happy customers (hint: treating them like criminals and children is not it).

I won’t buy an overpriced HD player or the overpriced discs not just because of the money, but because the formats are caught up in a stupid arms race that can lead to my player suddenly being remotely disabled (apparently I don’t own the player as much as I thought even if I pay $500 for it) so I can’t play my discs, or having new discs in the “same” format come out that won’t play on my player without a firmware update (because those aren’t a pain to do).
Continue reading Why a Geek won’t buy HD-DVD or Blu-ray Discs

If you were to take a snapshot of Digg.com at midnight on May 1st, 2007 you would see the power of the interweb.

Every story on the front page of Digg.com is the key to cracking HD-DVD’s. This is a great example of trying to treat adults like children and telling them how and where they can play video content they have purchased. DRM is simply bad business and if we continue to see widespread protests like we have tonight, DRM will be a thing of the past.

It is really unfortunate that the Motion Picture industry does not see the value in distributing their films without the restrictions of DRM which is obviously not stopping anyone. All of the major movie download services are dealing with the 800 pound gorilla that is DRM just to get distribution agreements with all of the studios. These services then try to provide a quality experience to their customers but can not truly do so with DRM wrapped around all of the films.

What should be done about this? I think the studios should start trusting their most valuable resource - You - the customer.

What do you think? I would really like to hear any comments or suggestions on what should be done regarding DRM.

(via Donklephant)

Net Neutrality is the principle that traffic to and from all website should be treated equally by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). They should not be allowed to slow down or speed up traffic based on what it is or whether they were paid a toll by the website operator. Basically, you paid for your connection to the internet and the people who ruin the website paid for their connection. The ISPs want to charge the web site providers an additional charge on top of that.

The effect is that they can extort fees from richer companies and prevent new companies and new services from prospering. They can also use this technique to crush competitors such as when they drop VoIP calls that are from competing companies or slow down video or music downloads that come from a competitors site instead of their preferred service. The effect of this practice (which has already happened and is happening) is to stifle innovation and competition, which hurts consumers and to raise the cost of doing business online to cover the new tolls. This is bad for everyone that isn’t an ISP and frankly it’s not that great for them in the long term as the Internet suffers.

The Internet was developed on the principle of Net Neutrality, it is part of the model that has made it a global success. Allowing a few greedy companies to break that model hurts everyone. Their networks exist in large part thanks to taxpayer subsidies and government granted monopolies and they run through public right-of-ways. It is well within our rights to demand that they act as neutral carriers of data packets and not as the gatekeepers or censors of what is on the Internet.

Visit Save the Internet to learn more and take action.

For while he almost had me with his maverick attitude and independent slant. His talk about compromise and ethics reforms. His sudden decision to speak at Bob Jones University without holding to his earlier pledge to tell off the racists running the place was, well, disheartening. Now he has decided to push for a ridiculous legislation that essentially bans sex offenders from using any website that requires registration, including blogs, chat rooms, social networking sites, product review sites, e-Commerce sites, etc. and potentially levies 6 figure fines against individuals who don’t police their blogs’ comments tightly enough or turn in people who post offensive material in comments.
Continue reading John McCain Loses My Vote

(via shlep: the Self-Help Law ExPress)

The North Country Gazette has a notice (highlighted above in the image) that invokes “Fair Use of Copyright” to forbid the reproduction of their publication. They’ve been called to task by David Giacalone of shlep for trying to void the Fair Use rights that all of us have. Copyright holders have exactly zero authority to void these rights and any claims to the contrary should rightly be smacked down with impunity.
Continue reading Using and Abusing Copyright Law