DancingSamurai.ca » DRM

Orwell spins in his grave…

DancingSamurai — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 15:48:40 +0000

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 creating quite 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.

Mark at BoingBoing points out that there are some countries (like Canada) where these books are no longer in copyright. Download a free public domain copy instead!

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Rapid-fire bullet update from my RSS feeds

DancingSamurai — Mon, 25 May 2009 21:48:48 +0000

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:

I remember reading about this last year… a family watched their young daughter waste away, losing weight, and all her energy over a period of weeks. The parents interpreted this as a “test of faith”, and instead of bringing her to a doctor as urged by their friends, they gathered their family together to surround this sick girl with prayer. Unfortunately, prayer’s not an effective treatment for diabetic ketoacidosis, so she died. Surprisingly (for the US), she was tried for second-degree homicide despite her protestations that it was her religious right to avoid medicine (of course it is – her right – but she cannot impose the same on her child). The verdict is in: guilty.

Prosecutors contend a reasonable parent would have known something was gravely wrong with Madeline and that her mother recklessly killed her by ignoring obvious symptoms, such as her inability to walk or talk.

(via Respectful Insolence)
Harriet Hall reviews Alcoholics Anonymous and the lack of evidence for its effectiveness – in fact, from what we know about addiction, it may even be harmful. Throw another ‘religious truth’ out the window…
What’s with the world today and governments/law enforcement trying to do stuff just because they can? The Spectator notes Canadian police are trying to pass legislation to fingerprint people before charges are laid (also covered here). In the UK, they’re putting CCTVs in classrooms and trying to expand a program that tracks movements of ‘terrorist suspects’ (aka anyone the govenrment doesn’t like) via the ubiquitous CCTV network (cannot find source ATM, but I know I read this somewhere…).
Interesting video (from TED) – 10 things you didn’t know about orgasm. (via BoingBoing)
This BoingBoing headline says it all: Canadian think-tank spends tax dollars to plagiarize and regurgitate talking points from US entertainment lobby group
For all the kids out there with no initiative, there are a few you have to give props to. (And no, they don’t just exist in Cory Doctorow’s fiction). So your school principal bans a whole bunch of books as being ‘inappropriate’. What do you do as a kid at the school? How about start a black market library of said books out of your locker for those interested? Brilliant! (via BoingBoing)
I’ve posted about Obama’s failing the high hopes we all had for him; see this video by Rachel Maddow that shatters it completely; she points out that Obama is proposing “preventive detention”, which would imprison people indefinitely if we REALLY REALLY think they MIGHT commit a crime in the future. (via BoingBoing: Obama promises to suspend Habeas Corpus, original article on Salon)

Local cache: maddow-on-obama
Finally, it’s moves like this that make me hate Apple and their App Store: BoingBoing: Apple says no Project Gutenberg for iPhone because some old books are dirty. Fine, have a censored app store, but then don’t petition the government to prevent me from installing any application I damn well please on hardware I paid for. Is RIM as bad with their blackberries?

*phew* OK, I have more, but this has taken long enough. I’m off to watch Terminator now!

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I can’t believe I missed this…

DancingSamurai — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:39:54 +0000

…absolutely brilliant xkcd comic about DRM.

With an election looming (?), it looks like Bill C-61 will die a well-deserved death. I just hope its ressurection isn’t even worse.

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AACS / DMCA and the power of many

DancingSamurai — Thu, 03 May 2007 21:53:43 +0000

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:

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

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Xbox Media Centre – A Journey to Media Bliss

DancingSamurai — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 14:04:24 +0000

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 Centre support 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…

It all started fairly inoccuously. I’m a big movie / media buff. I have gigs upon gigs of mp3s and all kinds of videos (anime fansubs, recorded TV shows, etc.). Ever since I can remember, I’ve been dreaming of the best method to make this library easily accessible on my entertainment centre. And by easily, I mean in a wife-proof sense — that is, it should be as easy as operating a tv or dvd player.

My previous setup had my computer hooked up to the television, my secondary sound card outputting audio to the surround speakers. This was feasible because in our current apartment, we don’t have a den — so the computer has to be beside the TV anyway. This will not be the case once we move (although I will set up a home LAN that will reach every room.) This setup was still not ideal, as I had to turn on the TV output on the computer, switch the sound over to the alternate sound card, and browse for the video I wanted using the mouse and keyboard.

Now I know J. River Media Centre, Windows Media Centre, and the myriad of other PVR / MediaPC software can do what I want. The main problem with these is I need a full fledged computer to run them, and preferably not my desktop (since it won’t be in the living room forever — not to mention I might want to use it for other things while the TV is going). Also, I’ve found J. River’s offering bloated, sluggish, and difficult to find and set up the features I want to use.

That’s why the XBMC idea was so attractive. I could set up a cheap, silent PC, which was networked, to play all my media at the touch of a button! Exactly what I wanted. If I wanted to make a silent, Media PC of equivalent power, even using Linux, it would cost me a pile of money and take a heck of a lot of time. Plus, with XBMC, I could play games! The Xbox 360 also has some media centre functionality, but is tied to Microsoft software and severely limited in the content it can play. It’s also a lot more expensive and doesn’t have the years of hacking knowledge behind it.

So last week I finally had some time, hopped onto Craigslist and found an old Xbox for $100. There were probably a few better deals out there (i.e. ones that came with many more games) but I had succumbed to this particular temptation and wanted it now.

The first order of the day was modding the xbox. This is necessary since Microsoft took some security measures to prevent people from running random code on their console (such as home-copied games). Luckily, there are always creative and ingenious people at work in the world breaking into things, so there are a number of ways to ‘mod’ the xbox to get it to run whatever one wants. Apparently, I could go to Pacific Mall, for example, and get it modded or order a modchip and do it myself. It all seemed like a lot of work, considering there are plenty of great, working softmods out there.

A good place for lots of info and tutorials for the xbox is xbox-scene.org, although it took me a little while to realize that 90% of the data is outdated. Or you can try a google search, which turned up this guide. [Local cache]

You can get most of the software you need from bittorrent trackers like mininova, and on xbins. To actually get the files, you need to embark on a bit of a quest… Log into IRC (I use ChatZilla, since it’s free and much easier to install than the ubiquitous mIRC), connect to efnet, and ‘/join #xbins’; then type ‘/msg xbins !list’. This will get you a password to the FTP server where you can grab all the goodies.

In order to minimally mess with my new xbox, I tried to follow Razz’s guide, even going to ordering a USB cable online. Armed with a couple of USB drives, a copy of the Action Replay program, and the Softmod Installer Deluxe (obtained from the AutoInstaller Deluxe package off mininova.org — you can also find torrent links at their official site), I tried. I really did. Unfortunately I could not get my USB drives to be detected by the Action Replay program, even after hacking the .inf (they were just detected as USB drives, as they normally should be).

So I gave up, and went for the big guns — modding by hotswapping the drive via xboxhdm. I followed the guide pretty much exactly. Instructions to take the xbox apart are all over the web. Here’s a local copy in case the forums go down.

After that I actually ended up swapping out the 8 GB Xbox HD for a 250 GB one (W00t!), using the steps in the guide above. Everything works really well. Even my fiancee seemed impressed!!

Well, now I need to get some actual work done… with music playing in the background… hehe….

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Vista highlights digital freedom battle

DancingSamurai — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 02:41:43 +0000

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.

Philip Dorrell further analyzes the digital war and comes on the side of some sort of mandatory licensing / taxation scheme. As he (in my opinion) rightly points out, big media’s desire for control can, if taken to its logical conclusion, only result in a ban on general-purpose computers, a move I vehemently oppose. Maybe that’s just my hacker / geek background talking, but the threat to innovation and personal freedoms something of that sort would pose is not outweighed by Hollywood’s desire to profit.

While Dorrell’s idea to tax everybody for arts & creativity, and have us vote on who that money goes to, isn’t bad, I don’t think it’s the only solution to the problem. (As an aside, I think it would be a great thing to implement for our government’s spending of tax dollars. I’d love to vote and say don’t spend a penny of my money on getting my fellow Canadians killed in Afghanistan, for example).

Back to arts though — I don’t believe for a second that compulsory payments are necessary. Many people who download movies or music illegally continue to buy CDs and DVDs. I’ve made donations to wikipedia and other ‘free’ services I use. If more artists / creators had ‘tip jars’ more people would pay if they enjoyed their works. Would this be enough funding? I don’t know. Maybe not. But it would be a start. And it would allow payment without the majority of my money being diverted to an industry whose practices I wholeheartedly oppose.

Local copy of his paper

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Misc BoingBoing links

DancingSamurai — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 03:07:24 +0000

Some random stuff:

Manifesto Games, an ‘indie label’ for video games. Will have to check it out.

Windows DRM cracked. I think the only files that actually have this is porn downloaded online…

Freenigma — easy encryption for e-mail?

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Canadian Artists stand up for users’ rights

DancingSamurai — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 04:50:21 +0000

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.

Sounds good to me!

UPDATE: This is also on The Globe and Mail!

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Sony, DRM and Spyware

DancingSamurai — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 00:31:56 +0000

I just read what is to date the most succinct, intelligent commentary on DRM I have come across on Dr. Felten’s blog (he’sa big cryptography etc. guru). I await in interest future posts on the topic… Possibly related posts:Sony’s evil shinanigans DRM and vendor-lock in – bad for everyone Berardinelli on the digital age Possibly related posts:

Sony’s evil shinanigans

DancingSamurai — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 05:02:28 +0000

In procrastinating from all my CaRMS application yet-to-be-done tasks, I’ve come across a lot of buzz about the lates DRM mess the recording industry got itself into. There’s a big outcry (at least in tech circles) about a rootkit that sony copy-protected CDs install on unsuspecting users… (Wired Article). All the more reason to disable AutoPlay, not install this crap, and use a multisession-aware ripping tool (eg. Nero) and just grab the music.

Who am I kidding, I haven’t bought a music CD since Dido’s No Angel was new. When you can get stuff for free off the net (which is perfectly legal in Canada BTW), or better yet, the local library, why spend the money? Honestly though the only songs I find that aren’t crap are from the 60s, or at most, the 80s, which under any sane copyright system should be in the public domain already. Ah well, one can continue to dream…

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