[Quote:]

Hey suckers! Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they’re repaying your honesty by taking away your music. Unless you go through a bunch of hoops (that you may never find out about, if you’ve changed email addresses or if you’re not a very technical person), your music will no longer be playable after October 9th.

[..]

Boy, the entertainment industry sure makes a good case for ripping them off, huh? Buy your media and risk having it confiscated by a DRM-server shutdown. Take it for free and keep it forever.

[Quote:]

With all the vitriol surrounding Spore’s DRM, it was only a matter of time before lawyers got involved. Courthouse News Service reports (via Shacknews) that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Electronic Arts in federal court, which alleges the company defrauds its customers by not disclosing the installation of SecuROM copy protection as part of Spore’s installation.

Interestingly, while the most vocal complaints regarding Spore’s DRM have focused on the ways it limits the use of the game, this lawsuit is concerned with the fact that it exists at all. “Although consumers are told that the game uses access control and copy protection technology, consumers are not told that this technology is actually an entirely separate, stand-alone program which will download, install and operate on their computers along with the Spore download,” the complaint reads.

“Consumers are given no control, rights or options over SecuROM,” the complaint continues. “The program is uninstallable. Once installed, it becomes a permanent part of the consumer’s software portfolio. Even if the consumer uninstalls Spore and entirely deletes it from their computer, SecuROM remains a fixture in their computer unless and until the consumer completely wipes their hard drive through reformatting or replacement of the drive.”

[Quote:]

Beckerblog The Recording Industry Association of America is declaring attorney-blogger Ray Beckerman a “vexatious” litigator and is seeking unspecified monetary sanctions to punish him in his defense of a New York woman accused of making copyrighted music available on the Kazaa file sharing system.

The RIAA said Beckerman, one of the nation’s few attorneys who defends accused file sharers, “has maintained an anti-recording industry blog during the course of this case and has consistently posted virtually every one of his baseless motions on his blog seeking to bolster his public relations campaign and embarrass plaintiffs,” the RIAA wrote in court briefs. “Such vexatious conduct demeans the integrity of these judicial proceedings and warrants this imposition of sanctions.”

Translation: he’s winning to much. Keep it up, Ray!

[Quote:]

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is on a fast-track process as rich nations hope to wrap it up by the end of the year. Unfortunately for everyone who cares about the outcome, it’s midway through September, and no draft text has yet emerged. The secrecy and the delay have inspired many conspiracy theories, none helped by leaked sets of corporate “wish lists” and public comments making outrageous demands. A worldwide group of public interest organizations has now banded together to call on ACTA negotiators to open the process up to scrutiny and public comment.

The letter, signed by more than 100 groups, has tough words for ACTA negotiators. “The lack of transparency in negotiations of an agreement that will affect the fundamental rights of citizens of the world is fundamentally undemocratic,” it says. “It is made worse by the public perception that lobbyists from the music, film, software, video games, luxury goods and pharmaceutical industries have had ready access to the ACTA text and pre-text discussion documents through long-standing communication channels.”

The very fact that the text of the agreement is not available to the public should be indication enough that it is rotten to the core.

[Quote:]

A recently released study has claims that the current ‘Intellectual Property’ situation in the world is not working well. Driven by a fear of losing out, and bolstered by an attitude that profit is the aim of IP, progress is hampered. Not only by the entertainment industry, also in biotechnology where medicines are sometimes restricted or withheld, causing deaths.

[Quote:]

Because it includes Draconian DRM program SecuROM, Spore’s taking a bit of a pounding at the moment. Same thing happened to Mass Effect, same thing happened to BioShock. The message is fairly clear: people know what SecuROM does, and they do not want. EA’s response to this? To let you eat cake. They’re sticking with the software, whether you like it or not, and upcoming RTS title Red Alert 3 will be coming bundled with it. This time, though, they’re going a little easier on you, allowing you five installs (and a few other minor tweaks).

Another game to avoid.

Spore is one of the most anticipated games of the year…

[Quote:]

The theory behind EA’s SecuROM DRM (also used in Mass Effect) is that it combats piracy by keeping file sharers from reusing activation codes.

That lasted almost a full day after Spore debuted in Australia, September 4.

Spore’s DRM being almost instantly cracked was a matter of routine for modern PC games. Now pirates can install Spore to their heart’s content while paying customers unwilling to get a cracked version are stuck with the restrictions.

Clearly people are mad as hell. But will we take it anymore?

Presently at Amazon.com, Spore has only a one-star user rating. Mostly, this isn’t about the quality of the game, which is for another discussion entirely. It’s about the DRM restrictions.

Shenanigans from a flash internet mob? Maybe. But the score is a result of 1,662 one-star ratings out of a total of 1,797.

[..]

Perhaps it’s the kick to the pants EA needs to rethink its DRM policy before it demands stool samples at every load screen.

And the really funny thing? If you manage to wade through all the “DRM is shit” reviews, you discover that it does not live up to the hype and expectation, and turns into a really boring space trader game after an hour or so of play.

[Quote:]

Glyn sez, “In response to a consultation on the European Commission’s proposal to almost double the term of copyright protection on sound recordings, the Open Rights Group have responded that for the vast majority of performers the projected extra sales income resulting from term extension is likely to be meagre: from as little as 50¢ each year in the first ten years, to as “much” as €26.79 each year. That’s because most of the gains (89.5%) will go to the top 20% of recording artists. Meanwhile the major labels will be dividing up millions in extra handouts every year.”

[Quote:]

Intellectual property laws which were designed to protect inventors are actually stifling innovation, according to a leading US law academic.

[..]

“I discovered a paradox in the free market and it is this: usually private ownership creates wealth, but too much ownership has the opposite effect - it creates gridlock,” he said. “When too many owners control a single resource – it can be a patent, a copyright, land – when too many people control a single resource, co-operation breaks down and wealth disappears. Everybody ends up losing.”

Heller has expanded on his theory in a just-published book, The Gridlock Economy – how too much ownership wrecks markets, stops innovation and costs lives.

He uses the example of someone who has come up with a new medicine and is trying to get it to market. To do that they must use systems, processes and tests which are owned by other people.

“Imagine a drug developer walking into an auditorium and seeing 50 or 100 or several hundred patent owners, each with their essential patent on their lap, and the drug developer knows that unless he’s able to negotiate successfully with every single one of those patent owners, his drug can’t come to market,” said Heller.

[Quote:]

Comcast has confirmed that all residential customers will be subject to a 250 gigabyte per month data limit starting October 1.

“This is the same system we have in place today,” Comcast wrote in an amendment to its acceptable use policy. “The only difference is that we will now provide a limit by which a customer may be contacted.”

The cable provider insisted that 250 GB is “an extremely large amount of data, much more than a typical residential customer uses on a monthly basis.”

Actually, no, it isn’t an “extremely large amount of data”. It’s about one HD movie per day, and that makes this simply an attempt to cut off services like iTunes and Amazon Unbox, which are increasingly competing with Comcast in the “making content available” business.

[Quote:]

The FBI has arrested a 27-year-old American blogger for leaking some unreleased Guns N’ Roses tunes to the internet.

According to The Associated Press and Los Angeles Times, the Feds cuffed Culver City, California’s Kevin Cogill on Wednesday morning, two months after his web site Antiquiet served up nine tunes from “Chinese Democracy” - an album Axl Rose and various other people have been dawdling over for more than a decade.

[..]

Clearly, an online “Chinese Democracy” leak poses a serious threat to Guns N’ Roses and its label, Geffen Records. If web surfers actually hear the unreleased album, the mix n’ match band can no longer maintain the illusion that it isn’t complete shite. ®

FBI and Geffen Records to be applauded for their attempts to contain this tripe, hopefully they will now realize the danger and burn the master tapes too.

[Quote:]

Most of the big movie studios and many online movie retailers are preparing to to launch a new initiative tentatively called Open Market, first proposed last year by Sony Pictures, we’ve learned. All of the major studios besides those associated with Walt Disney are already on board and will be part of the announcements made next month.

At this point I stopped reading, looked at the name, and guessed that they wanted to close the market to anything but their own scheme. It turns out to be a correct guess:

Open Market is a set of policy decisions and a software and services framework that will allow interoperability of various formats and DRM schemes that are currently splintering the market. That splintering locks users into a single store and format, and is putting a stranglehold on widespread adoption of movie sales online. Multiple sources have indicated that the studios are putting their weight behind the initiative to avoid the fate of the music industry and as a last ditch effort to stop or slow non-DRM movie sales.

A key part of Open Market will be a neutral third party to manage device registrations and movie purchases/rentals to ensure interoperability. This “domain” provider will manage services that let users register devices (PCs, televisions, mobile devices, etc.). Any movie purchased from any service provider can then be watched on a registered device.

So unless you “register” your computer, TV, phone or DVD player with them, you won’t be able to use them?

Yeah, people will really like that and stop using torrents right away.

Also, take a look at the slides in the PDF: “iTunes is best example of the problem”… let me translate for you: “the iTunes business model works, but we‘re not making any money, Apple is. We hate that.”

[Quote:]

By choosing Joe Biden as their vice presidential candidate, the Democrats have selected a politician with a mixed record on technology who has spent most of his Senate career allied with the FBI and copyright holders, who ranks toward the bottom of CNET’s Technology Voters’ Guide, and whose anti-privacy legislation was actually responsible for the creation of PGP.

[..]

After taking over the Foreign Relations committee, Biden became been a staunch ally of Hollywood and the recording industry in their efforts to expand copyright law. He sponsored a bill in 2002 that would have make it a federal felony to trick certain types of devices into playing unauthorized music or executing unapproved computer programs. Biden’s bill was backed by content companies including News Corp. but eventually died after Verizon, Microsoft, Apple, eBay, and Yahoo lobbied against it.

A few months later, Biden signed a letter that urged the Justice Department “to prosecute individuals who intentionally allow mass copying from their computer over peer-to-peer networks.” Critics of this approach said that the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, and not taxpayers, should pay for their own lawsuits.

Last year, Biden sponsored an RIAA-backed bill called the Perform Act aimed at restricting Americans’ ability to record and play back individual songs from satellite and Internet radio services. (The RIAA sued XM Satellite Radio over precisely this point.)

All of which meant that nobody in Washington was surprised when Biden was one of only four U.S. senators invited to a champagne reception in celebration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act hosted by the MPAA’s Jack Valenti, the RIAA, and the Business Software Alliance.

[Quote:]

The UK’s Performing Right Society has won a court case over its Dutch equivalent, Buma, preventing the issuing of a Europe-wide licence for online rights.

On 19 July 2008, Buma announced that it had issued such a licence to US online music provider Beatport and claimed that it was for worldwide repertoire, including that controlled by PRS. In 2006 Buma had issued a similar license to American online company eMusic.

However, Buma wasn’t authorised to include PRS repertoire in any multi-territory licence, anywhere outside the Netherlands. PRS sought an urgent injunction to prevent Buma from continuing to breach the contract.

Good. Let them sue each other into oblivion.

[Quote:]

BUMA bepleitte voor de rechtbank dat de oude afspraken over gebiedsbeperking tussen verschillende rechtenorganisaties, onderdeel van de Contract of Reciprocal Representation (CRR) uit 1973, niet van toepassing is op licenties voor online muziekgebruik. Het CRR zou voor online muziekgebruik een ‘betekenisloos en zinledig’ contract zijn. Online muziekgebruik is immers per definitie grensoverschrijdend, betoogde BUMA, en dat was in 1973 niet voorzien.

Wacht - wacht, deze weet ik! Even kijken of het me lukt…

De muziek-downloader bepleitte voor de rechtbank dat de oude afspraken over vermenigvuldigen, onderdeel van de Auteurswet uit 1912, niet van toepassing is op licenties voor online muziekgebruik. De auteurswet zou voor online muziekgebruik een ‘betekenisloos en zinledig’ contract zijn. Online muziekgebruik is immers per definitie grensoverschrijdend, betoogde de muziek-downloader, en dat was in 1912 niet voorzien.

Wat denk je, zou dat werken?

[Quote:]

The issue of copyright is a hot one in the UK right now and the government isn’t scared of getting involved. It has been putting huge amounts of pressure on ISPs to take action against alleged music file-sharers, so imagine, if you will, the beautiful crimson color Prime Minister Brown’s face will turn today when he is declared a pirate too.

Amongst other things, Anthony from antbag.com makes WordPress themes - he gives them away for free but if someone wants to donate, they can. His work is released under Creative Commons 3.0 license, which means that if someone wants to use a theme ‘as is’ or modified in some way, they are required to credit him. A link in the footer of every theme he creates points back to Anthony’s site - this is the minimum attribution he expects, which is pretty damn reasonable.

So imagine Anthony’s surprise when he discovered that his NetWorker theme for WordPress had been used by the British government without honoring the Creative Commons license. The theme has been heavily modified, including the removal of all links back to his site, but Anthony has been able to verify from the source files that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s own website is in fact built on NetWorker.

It is clear that Brown’s site indeed uses the Anthony’s theme - violating the Creative Commons license. Not only was the link to the the original removed, Brown’s site should have also made their version available under a similar license - share alike.

[Quote:]

Viacom is sending bogus copyright ownership claims and illegal posting notices to independent filmmakers posting their own movies on YouTube. These films contain not one iota of Viacom content. Take, for instance, this lovely short animation, “Juxtaposer,” made by Joanna Davidovich for her senior project. It’s completely her original creation. She has copyrighted it and says that she “only entered into distribution agreements that were nonexclusive.” Yet, the media corporation saw fit to have YouTube tell Joanna, “Viacom has claimed some or all audio and visual content in your video.”

Joanna is, of course, disputing the claim.

The video is still up, but now Viacom gets access to her video statistics. The worst part is the fear Joanna has that something she slaved and sweat over could be taken away from her. “I’m just a scared that my little film will be lost in the shadow of the hulking monolith…,” she wrote on her blog. Also on her blog is a comment by another filmmaker indicating Joanna isn’t the only filmmaker Viacom has fraudulently targeted in this manner.

[Quote:]

“While the ACTA itself is not public, the US Trade Representative has at least released the ACTA comments. While many of them are to be expected, such as the RIAA & co. wanting copyright filters, one item on the BSA’s wish list really stands out: ‘In a number of European countries one of the biggest impediments to efforts by rights holder to enforce their IP rights on the Internet is the overbroad interpretation of privacy laws by some European authorities.’ They want ACTA to ‘fix’ that by neutering the privacy laws. Given the BSA’s other questionable activities, it couldn’t hurt to tell their member companies what you think of their participation. After all, organizations like the BSA exist in part to shield their members from bad PR.”

[Quote:]

Companies that take an iron fist approach to fighting software piracy are generally best served by not lifting a pirate group’s code themselves to fix their own product.

Ubisoft, the French video game developer and publisher, was recently caught with its pants down, releasing a pirated hack as an official fix.

The EU Commission will be meeting shortly (possibly as soon as Wednesday) and formally accepting DG Internal Market’s proposal to extend the term of Copyright in sound recordings. Once accepted the legislative initiative will proceed through the Council of Ministers and EU parliament. As you would expect the Open Rights Group and EFF are hard at work lobbying against this and they would like your help. Please follow the link and sign the petition.

The EU is doing this despite their own findings, the findings of the UK government’s independent analysis and advice of Europe’s leading intellectual research centres.