The Doubleshot team is heading to CES, January 7-10, and we need some help getting there. 1500 USD will cover all the costs of the trip, and in return, you'll get a live feed to the floor of the Las Vegas convention center during CES.
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This month, I want to get everyone's opinions on E3 2009. What were you favourite games, and what announcements made you the most excited? If you have any analysis on the state of the console wars, here is the place to write it down.
A Southern California college student faces 10 years in prison for violating section 1201 of the Digital Millinium Copyright Act, which forbids circumvention of electronic copy protection schemes.
The Entertainment Consumers Association accuses him of illegally modifying game consoles.
A possible 10 years in prison for tinkering.
Why is copyright infringement punishable with a jail sentence?
Repeal the DMCA, completely.
Stop putting DRM systems in software and electronics.
Kindle pretty much sucks a lot. With an actual book you have tons more flexibility than you do with a kindle book, and in this digital age, that’s ridiculous. Be sure to watch part 1 and 2.
Please note that some games available on or through The Station may, when in operation, monitor your computer’s random access memory, MAC address, and system and configuration files, crash data, etc. for the purpose of monitoring and improving quality and service and also for the purpose of identifying unauthorized third party programs running concurrently with your game which, in SOE’s sole determination: (i) enable or facilitate cheating of any type; (ii) allow users to modify or hack the applicable game interface, environment, and/or experience in any way not expressly authorized by SOE; or (iii) intercept, “mine” or otherwise collect information from or through the applicable game (an “Unauthorized Third Party Program“). In the event that a game detects an Unauthorized Third Party Program, (a) the game may communicate information back to SOE, including without limitation your Station Account username, details about the Unauthorized Third Party Program detected and the activities or functions performed thereby, and/or details about your computer, and/or (b) SOE may exercise any or all of its rights and remedies under this Agreement or the applicable game end user license agreement without prior notice to the user linked to such Unauthorized Third Party Program.
In addition, you acknowledge that any and all character and account data that is stored and is resident on our servers, and any and all communications that you make within The Station or any game (including, but not limited to, messages solely directed at another player or group of players) traverse through our servers, may or may not be monitored by us or our agents, you have no expectation of privacy in any such communications and expressly consent to such monitoring of communications you send and receive. For example, SOE may monitor chat rooms in certain portions of The Station directed to Children.
Kindle DRM is showing it’s ugly face in the form of bad customer service. Turns out, if you return too many Kindle books, Amazon might lock you out of your account and prohibit you from purchasing from the site.
The fact that Amazon.com has the power, and the EULA to edit your collection of Kindle books remotely, and deny you access to your own purchased material, is scary enough. But the software DRM present in the Kindle books prevents sharing, and swapping. The thing is defective by design.
Defective By Design is a campaign of the Free Software Foundation, started to bring awareness to consumers about the dangers of DRM. They came up with a clever way to tell Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, to stop putting DRM into the Kindle. Send Gerbers peach-flavored baby food to him, en masse. I implore you to spend 2 dollars, or more, and send a message to Jeff.
When the new iPod Shuffle came out, I knew the proprietary control panel (wrapped around the cord) would be an inconvenience for customers. If it breaks, you have to buy a new set of headphones, or if you want to use headphones that are better than the standard earbuds, you’ll need Apples adapter to fit the controls.
Turns out, that method is even more inconvenienced by the presence of hardware DRM. Third party manufacturers will have to use an authentication chip if they want to interoperate with the new Shuffle.
In any normal case third parties would simply reverse engineer the technology to make it compatible, but thanks to the authentication chip, such reverse-engineering would be illegal under the DMCA. Apple is counting on that fact.
This is an anti-competitive system (as are all DRM systems) that puts innovation into the hands of a single corporation.
That is, they removed it from the Steam version of the game. But the retail version will still be infected by the DRM.
From Steampowered.com:
“This game was delivered with both Sony SecuROM and Steam digital rights management technology. This patch will remove the SecuROM technology from the game as well as remove the game-specific SecuROM license from your machine. The game will continue to be protected by Steam technology.”
Steam is DRM in it’s own right, however much more flexible and not quite as annoying. Steam has proven to be very good at preventing piracy, while at the same time maintaining strong support from it’s users.
Because of this, many developers fear a loss of revenue, and many may shy away from the iPhone for their projects. An app store developer called Ripdev thinks it has a solution though.
Kali Anti-Piracy, the developers claim, will prevent piracy of apps by wrapping the app in a server-side layer of DRM, on top of Apple’s DRM. They’re also challenging pirates to crack their system:
“Expect more and more apps to be much, much harder to crack in the near future. ;)”
Microsoft has revealed it’s new MSN Mobile Music Service, designed specifically for users who listen to music primarily on their mobile device. The weird thing about this is that the music you buy from the MSN store is locked to the phone you purchase it for. A return to Digital Rights Managment.
This comes as a surprise considering the MSN Music Store debacle in April 2008, in which Microsoft announced that the service would be shut down, without giving users a way to keep their purchases music outside of burning it to a cd.
The interview linked above is downright embarrasing.
Apparently the push to delay the transition to digital has been successful. A 90 day delay, which has infuriated republicans. I certainly am glad for the delay, though for different reasons. It seems like everyone, on both sides of this argument is missing the point, or at least not fully understanding the impact of the legislation in it’s current form. When the transition happens, consumers will be locked into the newest technology, all the time. Security standards will be updated, all the time, and because of the illegality of circumvention, consumers will find it difficult to preserve digital content. this transition is DRM.
In case you didn’t know, virtually every cellular phone on the market today is locked to a single carrier, which serves only to divide the users, and maximize profit for the carriers. Broadly speaking, it’s a form of digital rights management perpetuated by anti-circumvention clauses in laws like the DMCA, and the EU Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive.
The Electronic Frontiers Foundation has launched a campaign to unlock phones; go to the site linked above and sign the petition. It will be sent to the Copyright Office, in hopes of bringing attention to the matter. Hey if Google can do it, so can we.
