File-Sharing Winners and Losers of 2005
December 25, 2005 at 12:55 pm | Posted in Mac, Music, PC, Technology | Leave a commentInteresting read of this years winners and losers in the P2P area. No prizes for guessing who the big losers were…
File-Sharing Winners and Losers of 2005:
An anonymous reader writes “A lot happened in the P2P world in 2005 according to Slyck news. From the article: ‘BitTorrent soared to new heights while Steve Jobs enjoyed record breaking iPod sales. Yet not everyone shared this success. The RIAA continued its fight against P2P networking with little effect, as Sony-BMG disgraced itself and the DRM concept.'”
Pro-Hollywood bill aims to end fair use in digital television
December 24, 2005 at 1:36 am | Posted in Movies, Music, TV | Leave a commentSaw this on J.D Lasica’s Darknet blog. This is totally bogus and taking away rights from the consumers. This will likely get passed by the US Congress as Hollywood will just keep throwing money at the politicians until it passes. people need to stand up and let their representatives know that rights are more important than money.
Pro-Hollywood bill aims to end fair use in digital television:
Missed this the other day by Declan McCullagh in CNET’s News.com: Pro-Hollywood bill aims to restrict digital tuners.
A new proposal in Congress could please Hollywood studios, which are increasingly worried about Internet piracy, by embedding anticopying technology into the next generation of digital video products.
If the legislation were enacted, one year later it would outlaw the manufacture or sale of electronic devices that convert analog video signals into digital ones–unless those encoders honor an anticopying plan designed to curb redistribution. Affected devices would include PC-based tuners and digital video recorders.
“This legislation is designed to secure analog content from theft that has been made easier as a result of the transition to digital technologies,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican, said late Friday. Criminals “obtain copyrighted content and then redistribute for profit at the copyright owner’s expense,” he added.
Bullshit. This will outlaw fair use in the video/television realm.
Digital video recorders with analog tuners or inputs would only be allowed to record “copy-prohibited” shows for 90 minutes. After that, the digital recording must be “destroyed or otherwise rendered unusable.”
Analog video output of “copy-prohibited” recordings would be permitted as long as it was to a VGA output with a resolution of no more than 720 pixels by 480 pixels.
Violations would be punished by civil penalties between $200 and $2,500 per product. Commercial offenders would be imprisoned for up to five years and fined not more than $500,000.
The two copy-protection systems that must be supported are Video Encoded Invisible Light–used in a Batmobile toy–and Content Generation Management System-Analog.
Sony to Recall 4 million CD’s with XCP DRM from Stores
November 16, 2005 at 10:14 am | Posted in Music, PC, Technology | Leave a commentIn addition, Sony will offer exchanges for consumers who purchased the discs with a copy that does not contain the XCP DRM.
The fallout from this exercise is going to prove expensive for Sony or is it? The costs of re-pressing 4 million CD’s probably won’t hurt them too much but their reputation is taking a hammering. It is a start but is it too little too late?
read more | digg story
Sony halts production of ‘rootkit’ CDs
November 12, 2005 at 2:17 pm | Posted in Music, PC, Technology | 1 CommentSony BMG Music Entertainment said Friday that it will suspend production of CDs with copy-protection technology that has been exploited by virus writers to try to hide their malicious code on PCs.
They have bitten the bullet and are stopping production of CD copy protection that installs rootkits. Won’t be long before they try some other stunt to get around it but for now it is a start.
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Sony sued by State of California over DRM Root Kit
November 11, 2005 at 12:26 pm | Posted in Music, PC, Technology | Leave a commentWell, Sony is on the hot plate now, sued by the state of California for having the DRM Root Kit. It seems that it violates several California laws. If this goes through, they may not be able to sell these CD’s in California at all.
Well seems California has filed and Ney Nork will soon file suits against Sony?BMG for the installation of rootkits on to Windows machines.
The EFF (Electronic frontier Foundation) is also investigating on whether a class action suit can be filed.
If I was a Sony artist I might be getting concerned about now and looking to jump ship.
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Using DRM Against Itself
November 11, 2005 at 12:20 pm | Posted in Music, PC, Technology | Leave a commentI figured out how to burn as many CD’s as I wanted with DRM installed. Rename your burning program with $sys$ in front of it.
If you have been following the Sony DRM issues recently you would know that the rootkit that is installed hides file with $sys$ in front of it. This person says that he did that with his favourite burning software and can therefore get around the DRM that restrict CD burning.
Some have said it dosen’t work and some do. may depend on software and machine setup but if it does work Sony are just causing more hassles for themselves. I for one am not sorry.
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DRM this, Sony!
November 7, 2005 at 2:18 pm | Posted in Music, PC, Technology | Leave a comment“I hope this is the week that everyone in the world finds out what a root kit is. And I hope it’s a week we look back on in amazement, as we consider just how far Sony was willing to go to criminalize consumers in its efforts to preserve control over its product.
Another excellent article on the Sony DRM issue. This one is written a little bit easier for the non-tech savvy person to understand. If you have time read both articles.
BOYCOTT SONY!!!!!
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More about SONY’s DRM rootkit by Mark Russinovich
November 7, 2005 at 2:11 pm | Posted in Music, PC, Technology | Leave a commentMark Russinovich has another article about the dangerous patch that released by SONY/BMG. He also confirms that the malware sends something back to SONY’s server. Make sure to take a look at the comment posted by XCP support. It basically says … TRUST us in everything we did.
For those of you that haven’t about this case Sony/BMG are putting a program on their CD’s that automatically installs a program called a rootkit. I am no tech expert but my understnding of a rootkit is a program that gets buried very deep into your system, is almost always untraceable except by experts and it can do nasty things to your computer.
Sony are saying it is part of their “anti-piracy� software but there is no reason to install anyhting like this so deeply into your system. They then released a half-assed unsinstall which Mark discusses in the link but it requires jumping through hoops to receive and that’s just not right.
This won’t affect Mac machines but if your a Windows user everytime you put a music CD into your computer make sure you hold down the SHIFT key as this prevents the auto-run feature and no programs will then be loaded. Once the CD is in you can then burn it or play it whenever you like,
Just another reason to get a Mac. The longer this goes on and more mainstream media pick up on it and make the general person understand it’s implications the more likely the big record companies will reisit using these kind of devious tactics to stop people from copying cd’s.
read more | digg story
DRM Crippled CD’s – A story in 4 Parts
November 1, 2005 at 12:43 pm | Posted in Music, PC, Technology | Leave a commentThis is a story of a guy who purchased a CD in good faith only to find out the DRM crippled it from being copied, ripped or played in anything but in Windows media Player. Even the band disapproved of what happened but they have been caught in the middle.
Check the link and find out the weird part of this story, it’s stunning.
USCO Reviewing DMCA Anti-Circumvention Clause
October 28, 2005 at 1:18 pm | Posted in Mac, Movies, Music, PC, Technology | Leave a commentAs reported at Slashdot it appears that a review of DRM laws and the DMCA are being undertaken and will be for the next month. I think it would be good if all Americans who believe that they should own what they pay for and have the right to do with it want they want write to the USCO and get this ridiculous changed. I doubt they would listen to anyone from outside the USA but you never know.
Do what you think is right but if you do write in make sure you do what the Slashdot article mentions and write a coherent letter outlining why you think the law needs to be changed.
USCO Reviewing DMCA Anti-Circumvention Clause:
ahknight writes “The United States Copyright office begins its required review of the effects of the anti-circumvention portions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act on November 2nd. This review period lasts until December 1, 2005. They will be accepting your well-thought-out opinions on the web and by mail. If you’re reasonably ticked that you can’t legally get around encrypted files to get at the media you’ve bought, start writing a coherent stance for the USCO today.”
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