Digital Rights Management

By Cory Doctorow A US appellate division court has thrown out a DMCA claim against the Air Force (a former soldier wrote some software on his own time for the USAF, added in a time-bomb that made it stop working, and quit and sold the software's ...

DMCA Does not Apply to US Government, Which Can Crack DRM With ... - Federated Media

We're The US Government, So We Can Ignore Pesky Things Like The DMCA - Techdirt

More: CREATT Interactive Group

By Cory Doctorow The DMCA itself contains no express waiver of sovereign immunity," the judge wrote, "Indeed, the substantive prohibitions of the DMCA refer to individual persons, not the Government." Thus, because sovereign immunity is not explicitly ...

DMCA Does not Apply to US Government, Which Can Crack DRM With ... - Federated Media

We're The US Government, So We Can Ignore Pesky Things Like The DMCA - Techdirt

More: CREATT Interactive Group

By Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow: SoundExchange has offered a poison pill to webcasters: add DRM to your streams, get a discount. SoundExchange are the gangsters who control the royalties for Internet radio, and they recently convinced regulators to raise the rates to insane heights, effectively shutt...

By Cory Doctorow It's just proof that no good deed goes unpunished: people who downloaded Sony's music from P2P networks without paying for it didn't get deliberately infected, while people who were honest and tried to do the right thing by buying CDs got nailed. Sony BMG filed a summons in a New York state c...

By Cory Doctorow Gucci is announcing their line of DRM-free clothes today. These threads can be worn an infinite number of times, anytime of the year. If you happen to have multiple closets, these DRM-free clothes can be moved to and from your different closets.

By Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow: Apple's new DRM-free tracks from the iTunes store not only contain your email address and password name in hidden fields, but in at least one case, more than 360k of hidden information. EFF's technologists have found a hidden block of data in the new iTunes tracks: We compar...

By Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow: PayPlay has just launched "the world's largest MP3 download store" -- a store selling more than 1.3 million indie music tracks, with a search engine that allows you to search for your fave artists and get similar indie artists in the catalog. Previous to this PayPlay sold onl...

By Cory Doctorow MRT and Bluebeat said the failure to use an available copyright protection solution contravenes the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits the manufacture of any product or technology designed to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a...

By Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow: The BBC has hired a former Microsoft executive who was responsible for the Windows Media technology, to its "iPlayer" division. That's the division which it will be making crippled versions of some of the BBC's programming available online.

By Mark Frauenfelder Previously on Boing Boing: • Digg users revolt over AACS key • Secret AACS numbers, the photoshopped edition • Ed Felten explains the AACS revolt • EFF explains the law on AACS keys • AACS DRM body censors Cory's class blog • New AACS crack "can't be revoked"

By Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow: Yesterday, I blogged about how the DRM-licensing body that controls AACS (the crippleware in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD) censored my class blog, threatening legal action if we didn't remove a link to the Doom9 forum, where a forum member described the flaws in AACS. They also insi...

By Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow: This semester, I've been teaching a USC undergrad class called Pwned: Everyone on Campus is a Copyright Criminal. Back in February, one of my students did a great post about the AACS processing key crack on the class blog.

By Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow: The Economist has come out against DRM in a tell-it-like-it-is editorial that explains why anti-copying technology is bad for the entertainment industry. The movie industry, which nowadays depends as much on DVD sales as on box-office receipts, still seems to think tha...

By Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow: New Sony DVDs have been corrupted with a DRM system that renders them unplayable on many DVD players -- including Sony players: Reports are starting to pile up of unhappy encounters with a new copy-protection system that Sony is baking into commercial DVD release and whic...

By Cory Doctorow Apple drops Trusted Computing EMI abandons CD DRM Why Apple is to blame for iTunes DRM Apple sued for iTunes/iPod monopoly tying Apple and Sony sued for non-interoperable DRM Germany and France challenge iTunes DRM Sony: DRM cost us the Walkman DRM company vows to hack iTunes DRM

By Cory Doctorow Enforcing severe home recording and copying limitations. CPCM will allow content providers to apply copy restriction labels to broadcast streams. For example, a program could be marked as "Copy Never." In turn, your DVRs and others devices receiving the signal will have to obey and forbi...

By Cory Doctorow Which is funny, since removing DRM can only help sell music. After all, no one buys music for the DRM. People who buy DRM songs -- instead of nicking the same music on P2P -- do so because they don't mind the DRM, or because they don't know about the DRM, or because they are willing to hold their nos...

By Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow: After Steve Jobs announced that he'd remove DRM from the iTunes Music Store "in a heartbeat" if rightsholders would let him, Clay wrote and recorded a new version of John Lennon's "Imagine," with lyrics reflecting his ...

By Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow: The anti-DRM activists at Defective by Design staged an anti-Vista ... to spread the message that Vista's DRM is a danger to computer users. ... Why Apple is to blame for iTunes DRM Anti-DRM demonstrators in hazmat suits ...

By noemail@noemail.org (Cory Doctorow) Cory Doctorow: The TiVoToGo DRM has been cracked. This is the DRM that locks the files you move from your TiVo to your PC (something that is lawful, even without DRM). The DRM restricts how you use your TV shows, and prevents you from using it at all outside of a Windows system.

By noemail@noemail.org (Cory Doctorow) It starts with "Digital Rights Management" -- the anti-copying measures that computers employ to frustrate their owners desires. These technologies literally attack their owners, treating them as menaces to be thwarted through force majeure, deceit, and cunning. Incredibly, DRM ge...

By noemail@noemail.org (Cory Doctorow) Cory Doctorow: The Macrovision DRM in the new TiVo Series3 recorders is so broken that just having the wrong piece of equipment attached to your TV can cause it to register some shows as un-savable to your VCR, DVD recorder, etc. TiVo characterizes this as a glitch, but that's not the whole s...

By noemail@noemail.org (Cory Doctorow) This is a different twist on the constant battle between DRM crackers and builders (see, just last week, Microsoft's lawsuit5 against a hacker for releasing an app that strips off its PlaysForSure DRM). If successful, DoubleTwist will eliminate Apple as a middleman to its own hardware. B...

By noemail@noemail.org (Cory Doctorow) I like this one quite a lot, but am skeptical of the clause on Digital Rights Management, which says that DRM should be allowed, provided that it doesn't undermine "fair dealing" (the UK equivalent of fair use). The problem is that DRM inevitably undermines fair dealing, since fair dealin...

By noemail@noemail.org (Cory Doctorow) Jérôme bypassed DRMs on music legally purchased on iTunes and another French online provider, explained how to bypass DRMs on a webpage, and translated a software that gets rid of protections on digital content; for all that, he risks a € 30,000 fine and up to six months in prison."

By noemail@noemail.org (Cory Doctorow) But it gets worse. If you rip your own CDs, WiMP11 will take your rights away too. If the 'Copy protect music' option is turned on, well, I can't top their 1984 wording. "If the file is a song you ripped from a CD with the Copy protect music option turned on, you might be able to restore your usage rig...

By noemail@noemail.org (Cory Doctorow) Cory Doctorow: The new Microsoft Zune player (their soi-disant "iPod Killer") applies DRM to all the files you move onto it, even the Creative Commons-licened music. The problem is that CC licenses prohibit this. What's more, CC licenses are machine-readable and could, theoretically,...

By noemail@noemail.org (Cory Doctorow) Cory Doctorow: A spokesman for the US Department of Justice has counseled European governments to stop investigating the anti-competitive, anti-consumer aspects of Apple's iTunes DRM. Apple imposes their DRM even when musicians ask not to have it applied to their music, and they have...

By noemail@noemail.org (Cory Doctorow) Cory Doctorow: The Center for Democracy in Technology has released a report on DRM and consumer rights, intended to serve as a guideline for governments who are looking to balance consumer interests with legal protection for DRM, which is technology used to limit how we can use the media...

By noemail@noemail.org (Cory Doctorow) Cory Doctorow: Bruce Schneier points out that Microsoft has re-classified "security patch" to include patches to Windows DRM. This is a big problem -- best practice for Windows users is to run those critical patches that MSFT ships out on the first Tuesday of every month ("patch Tuesday"...

By noemail@noemail.org (Cory Doctorow) Cory Doctorow: New Zealand government officials have responded to my criticism of their newly released national DRM strategy -- their strategy for government adoption and use of technology that prevents copying and unauthorized use.

By noemail@noemail.org (Cory Doctorow) Cory Doctorow: myFairTunes 6 is the latest iteration of a recent series of cracks for tracks purchased from the iTunes Music Store. It converts your music from the iTunes Music Store proprietary format to an unencrypted AAC that you can convert to MP3 or OGG and play on any pocket-player, w...