NY Times reports that Amazon deleted some people’s bought-and-paid-for e-books from their Kindles. (At least they refunded the money). This is creatingquite a reaction on the blogosphere.
As one of my readers noted, it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.
Here are a couple of stories I’ve seen on my RSS feeds (I use Google Reader now), that I keep meaning to write lengthy posts about but I know I’ll never get around to it… so here’s the linkalicious list for any who are interested:
So, I’m away from the blogosphere for a few days (an occurence that will likely be all too common over the coming months, as I’m on 1-in-4 call), and look what I miss. Apparently some people posted a 128-bit number that’s important in decrypting the new HD-DVDs. The industry has tried to suppress this with a slew of legal letters, and guess what, the Internet really doesn’t like it when people try and delete some data. Now it’s everywhere, including in this terrible rap song. This YouTube video below is even better.
I really can’t say it any more succinctly than Cory Doctorow:
This is the law of the land, and it stinks. If there was ever an example of why the DMCA needs to die, this is it. The idea that a sixteen-digit number is illegal to possess, to discuss in class, or to post on a news site is offensive to a country where free speech is the first order of the Constitution. The MPAA and RIAA are conspiring to unmake America, to turn this into a country where free expression, due process, and the rule of law take a back-seat to a perpetual set of governmental handouts intended to guarantee the long-term profitability of a small handful of corrupt companies.
Ah, I love the Internet. I also love Canada, because here I can write this without fear of the DMCA:
I don’t remember what first led me to find out about the wonderful Xbox Media Centre. Perhaps it was a post on J. River’s Media Centresupport forums as I was searching for something else; perhaps it was a random google search. Whatever it was, I thought, “hmm…”, and filed the knowledge of this software’s existence into some dusty corner of my mind. There, it grew, nagging at me, a constant temptation — to which I finally succumbed to.
Boy am I glad I did. XBMC is the slickest, most versatile media centre I have yet encountered. Let me tell you how I did it…
January 06, 2007By: DancingSamurai Category: Links
With Vista coming out soon (indeed, already prevalent on torrent sites), it’s increased content protection mechanisms are coming under a lot of scrutiny. Peter Gutmann writes this in his analysis:
Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called “premium content”, typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it’s not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista’s content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry.
Michael Geist has the story; and it’s hit some of the usual suspects and some techy sites. It remains to be seen if it’ll make a sound in the MSM… but it’s encouraging.
Basically a lot of top-name Canadian artists are saying a) Suing music fans is stupid; b) DRM is counterproductive and dangerous; c) Canadian policymakers should enact legislation to help local, not international, artists and culture.
