Before folks jump all over Apple on the Apple vs. Samsung design patent case, read some background on design patents. You might find it amusing.
All in Piracy
What the Heck is "Social DRM"?
When I first heard the term “social DRM” in the context of e-book anti-piracy efforts — the link is to the RSS feed of my del.icio.us bookmarks tagged “socialDRM” — I thought it referred somehow to group peer pressure not to copy files without permission.
One of the feeds I monitor is provided by MobileActive.org:
The OECD has published the Executive Summary of a major report on international trade involving counterfeited and pirated products. The report, The Economic Impact of Counterfeiting and Piracy, estimates that international trade in 2005 involving counterfeit or pirated works totalled $200 billion US.
First we had the release by Halderman and Felten of their masterly dissection of Sony’s DRM rootkit fiasco. Now we have Kathryn Cramer’s exposé of how some media companies are trying to buy off Congress and force consumers to make current technology obsolete by artificially retsricting the quality of digital signals fed to certain types of display devices.
Collaborative Deconstruction of DRM
There's a terrific series of articles and comments over at Freedom to Tinker that involves the authors' pre-publication of a detailed analysis of DRM technology. Some of the stuff is pretty technical, but if you take the time, you'll be impressed with the analysis and with the many intelligent comments that are being left (I left one, for example!)
I’m not ant-copyright. Copyright owners have a right to do whatever they want with the properties they own and control. But to make a free market operate, there has to be information available about product features that will make products potentially unusable. Sadly, what I see happening is market confusion and a crumbling of the standards that once made it so easy to buy and use recorded music.
The UK-based IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) has published a new report estimating losses worldwide from illegal CD duplication and sale.