Managing Rights Management

FTC DRM Workshop Draws 700 Comments

As noted here, the Federal Trade Commission will hold a public workshop in March on Digital Rights Management in Seattle. At least 700 comments have been file with the commission and have been made available to the public here. A preponderance of comments seem to have been submitted by individuals.... Read more →

Apple Drops DRM, Norway Drops Law Suit

CNet and other outlets report that Norway's consumer watchdog is dropping legal action against Apple now that music from iTunes will be without DRM protection. The legal action complained that Apple's FairPlay DRM prevented tracks purchased from Apple could not be played on non-Apple devices. Norway's consumer ombudsman, Bjoern Erik... Read more →

Subscriber's Email Address Remains In DRM-Free Tracks From iTunes

Writing on CNet.UK, Nate Lanxon says that all though DRM has been removed from iTunes tracks, consumers should be aware that these files do still have the email address of the iTunes subscriber. Although iTunes Plus files feature no copy protection, files downloaded still contain the email address you have... Read more →

Apple Retains DRM As Well

EFF Activist Richard Esguerra has a useful blog posting on Apple's remaining DRM and DRM-related technologies, although I fundamentally disagree with the EFF and Esguerra on DRM outside of the music industry. Still, Esguerra's blogicle is worth a read. He points out that Apple still uses DRM: In fact, an... Read more →

Apple Drops DRM, Adopts Variable Pricing

Apple has dropped the use of its FairPlay DRM that restricted the number of copies that could be made of music tracks while adopted variable pricing and giving pricing control back to the labels. This Variety article has a good summary of the situation. Since the labels are throwing in... Read more →

What Does AACS Teach Us About the DMCA?

My Google Alerts filter found a blogicle on the DMCA penned by Zach Powell, a third year law student at the University of Richmond (VA) School of Law (posted semi-anonymously, I have his permission to use his name). Written for Prof. Chris Cotropia's copyright law class blog, Powell posted a... Read more →

Jobs: Blu-ray A "Bag of Hurt"

Paul Sweeting's article on ContentAgenda is worth a read. The royalty stack for Blu-ray and implementation issues, especially on laptops where battery life is critical, seem to have pushed Apple away from Blu-ray and toward iTunes High Def downloads. Between the new intellectual property in the physical format, BD-Java, AACS... Read more →

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't?

A cartoon "take" on the DRM dilemma facing music downloaders from Randall Munroe's xkcd.com webcomic site: Read more →

Norway Pressures Apple to Drop DRM from iPhone

It's now well understood that DRM is being used to enforce business models by protecting content from being used without authorization or on unauthorized devices. Now Norway is being pressured by consumer advocates to force Apple to open their iTunes platform, so says the Romow Science and Technology Blog. The... Read more →

Who Killed The Home Theater PC (HTPC)?

Writing in Ars Technica, Nate Anderson says the death of the Home Theater PC may be ascribed to several factors, including various rights management / copy protection / encryption technologies. While the recording industry has largely learned its lesson from DRM, the movie business still thinks it's a great idea.... Read more →

Napster Undervalued Because of Earlier DRMed Music?

Wired reports that a few Napster shareholders have filed suit complaining that Napster has been unable to compete with iTunes in part because at one point Napster used Microsoft's DRM to protect music tracks. The Apple situation can be traced back to Napster's ill-fated embrace of Microsoft's DRM platform and... Read more →

Open Source Meets Proprietary: Where's the Balance?

BusinessWeek has an article on open source and restrictive and/or proprietary technologies such as DRM. The article reports a discussion with Nokia's Dr. Ari Jaaksi: Jaaksi, Nokia's vice president of software and head of the Finnish handset manufacturer's open-source operations, said: "We want to educate open-source developers. There are certain... Read more →

Vista, DRM, and the Enterprise Preference for XP?

In a recent article, InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy suggests that DRM is a factor in the preference among Enterprise IT folks for XP over Vista. Of course, the secret to maintaining a de facto monopoly is to not push your customer base too far. Every industry segment has its breaking point,... Read more →

How IS Apple Changing DRM?

Writing in The Guardian, Tim Anderson considers how Apple's evolving business models might affect the use of DRM. More specifically, will Apple move to a subscription-based service: Mark Mulligan, digital music analyst at Jupiter Research, also expects Apple to change its approach. "It's highly likely Apple will get into the... Read more →

Broadcast Flag Triggers Vista Refusal To Record?

DRM should be inobtrusive while doing the right thing at the right time. Various outlets including ars technica have reported that PCs running Vista Media Center software have refused to record certain NBC TV programs, providing an opportunity for some mostly deserved DRM-bashing. Handfuls of Windows Vista Media Center users... Read more →

Death of DRM Greatly Exagerated - RIAA

According to CNet, the RIAA is predicting that that DRM is not dead and will make a comeback. "(Recently) I made a list of the 22 ways to sell music, and 20 of them still require DRM," said David Hughes, who heads up the RIAA's technology unit, during a panel... Read more →

FTC on DRM-Disclose, Label It, OR Else

Ars Technica reports on a recent Federal Trade Commission report issued nearly 18 months after the conference that spawned it. Regarding DRM, the report says in part: As new, proprietary technologies are introduced, consumers will be faced with noninteroperable products. Despite consumers’ general preference for interoperability, which provides the greatest... Read more →

DirectTV Clamps Down

[I've been off doing a crash project for a client. Catching up today.] Several sources including this Ars Technica article by Eric Bangeman report that Direct TV has changed the rights management rules regarding the time to view recorded TV shows. DirecTV DVR owners got some bad news from the... Read more →

DRM In Movie and TV Downloads? Wired Says No Way!

Is the movie download business like the record business and should the lessons learned there be applied to movie and TV program downloads? Yes, says Frank Rose in Wired in an argument that seems a bit illogical: The lessons from the music fiasco are clear: Trying to limit the inherent... Read more →

Apple Shuts Down DRM Stripping Site

The Standard (and other sources) reports that Apple has been able to shut down a site that strips FairPlay DRM from iTunes files. The open source Hymm project received a "cease and desist" order from Apple attorney's. iTunes customers can legitimately lose FairPlay DRM in order to play their music... Read more →

Why is Adobe Adding DRM to Flash?

EFF staff technologist Seth Schoen writes that Adobe is adding DRM to the latest version of Flash. Why they are doing this is, of course, an interesting question. Schoen suggests that the major motivation seems to be Adobe's business model: Users may also have to upgrade their Flash Player software... Read more →

Canadian Privacy Minister Cautions Against DRM

Privacy is a touchy subject. For nearly 20 years, I have advocated that consumers be informed in advance and "opt in" to any collection of usage information by DRM technologies. The reason is that this information has value. In some business models, it's perfectly reasonable to provide compensation to consumers... Read more →

David Pogue: The Generational Divide in Copyright Morality

NYTimes columnist David Pogue asked his college audience about various use scenarios for music and video. Few found any moral or ethical problem with violating copyright. Pogue concluded this piece with: I don't pretend to know what the solution to the file-sharing issue is. (Although I'm increasingly convinced that copy... Read more →

Defective by Design Targets eBooks

The Defective by Design anti-DRM campaign has targeted eBook readers and books from Amazon and Sony: When you purchase a DRM ebook, it is locked to a single device. When the device breaks or becomes outdated, you can no longer read your ebook. You buy a lock, but you don't... Read more →

Geist On Canada's DMCA Debate

Although I don't always agree with his positions, Canadian Prof. Michael Geist's blog is often a good source of information regarding copyright, DRM, and other issues up North. Apparently in response to consumer and interest group pressure, the government did not introduce a copyright bill this week as had been... Read more →

Western Digital's Crippleware

Writing in the ChannelRegister (UK), Andrew Orlowski has written a couple of useful articles on the Western Digital's 1 terabyte network drive targeted to the consumer market. The first article describes how WD has crippled the filesharing software it provides so that one cannot share media files across the net.... Read more →

Wired Shut: copyright and the shape of digital culture by Tarleton Gillespie

Tarleton Gillespie is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University and a fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. His recent book, Wired Shut: copyright and the shape of digital culture (MIT Press, 2007) may appeal more to students of media... Read more →

There Is A Fix For Buyers of MLB Programs

The New York Times reports that MLB has a fix for those who were unable to play video after MLB changed its DRM system. But it turns out that MLBAM can something after all. I just got off the phone with MLBAM spokesman Matthew Gould, who said fans who purchased... Read more →

How NOT To Do DRM

I seldom agree with anti-DRM activist Cory Doctorow. Nonetheless, he's exactly correct that MLB should not disenfranchise customers who bought videos of baseball games by unsupporting the underlying DRM system. MLB shut down the DRM server because they've changed suppliers, and now they expect suckers to buy downloads of games... Read more →

The DRM Cat and Mouse Game-The BBC Gets It Right

Jonathan Fildes, Science and technology reporter for BBC News has written a good article on the arms wars between security and DRM technology providers and hackers. The Microsoft DRM system used by the BBC's iPlayer has already been cracked and people using the trial version of the player have already... Read more →