Music industry shoots itself in foot, again

IFPI Advises Kids to Use LimeWire and Kazaa:

Together with the charity Childnet, IFPI recently launched a campaign to educate kids, teachers and parents about the dangers of filesharing. Ironically, the legal alternatives they suggest direct the kids to LimeWire, Kazaa and sites that sell hardcore adult movies.

Hizbullah versus Lebanon

I’m at a loss over who I’d like to see win in the recent fighting between Hizbullah and supporters of the Lebanese government.

On the one hand, although Hizbullah say they no longer want to make Lebanon into an Islamic state, there are no doubt still some very dodgy people in the Hizbullah leadership, with very dodgy religious agendas. And the more religion gets out of politics and retreats into the private sphere, the better it will be for the entire human species.

On the other hand, the fighting statrted because the Lebanese government wanted Hizbullah to scrap their secure telecom network, which provided telephone and Ineternet communications independently of the Lebanese government. I think everyone should have access to secure telecoms networks that are independent of governments.

DRM to make a comeback?

Some people at the RIAA think music DRM will make a comeback:

You know how all the record labels have been dropping their requirements for DRM on their music, opening up more and more venues for DRM-free music? Well, according to David Hughes, head of RIAA technology, that’s just a temporary condition. From now on, we’re going to increasingly rent our music with subscription services that will use DRM to take it away from us if we stop subscribing.

Hughes believes that per-track purchases are going the way of the dodo in favor of these other models, and that’s why DRM will have a resurgence. “I think there is going to be a shift,” he said. “I think there will be a movement towards subscription services and they will eventually mean the return of DRM.”

Hughes is almost certainly wrong on this. DRM restricts customers’ freedom, and they don’t like it, which is one reason why the RIAA had to get rid of it. (The other reason is to compete with Apple iTunes, which otherwise would dominate the paid download industry, to the detriment of the RIAA).

The RIAA are worried

The RIAA are worried. Worried that someone, somewhere might still not hate them, after they’ve treated music fans and musicians alike with contempt for years. To rectify this, they’re trying to pass a law that would allow them to seize people’s houses (in the USA, at least) if they’re caught with unauthorised music:

I was just alerted that the House of Reps has passed HR 4279, with the lovely name, PRO-IP (Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008). Like the doublespeak PATRIOT Act and Peacekeeper missiles, PRO-IP puts local law enforcement in a position to demand the forfeiture in criminal proceedings of stuff used to violate copyright. Which means that instead of the RIAA simply trying to collect fines, they can also incite local authorities to collect all the computers and related gear that was used to pirate.

If this bill is passed in its present form by the Senate and signed, that means there’s no more pro forma RIAA lawsuit payoffs, because if you wind up settling with the RIAA, you could still lose all your stuff in addition to any fee you paid them.

In fact, you could lose your house even if you haven’t pirated music:

This is particularly irksome in light of the MSN Music shutdown, about which the EFF has written a strong and powerful letter. It is increasingly likely a normal person could have purchased music legally from an online site, burned it to an ordinary audio CD, and in the right set of circumstances be branded a pirate because the original “granting” authority no longer exists to prove that the consumer was a legitimate purchasers.

If this law passes, I’m sure a few well-publicised cases will turn everybody against the RIAA and their increasingly desperate tactics, not just in the USA but in other developed countries. And then the backlash will begin: politicians will find they can’t get re-elected unless they stop sucking up to the RIAA, and they’ll start enacting sensible copyright laws, ones that recognize that the Internet, with it’s ability to instantly, effortlessly copy and transmit information, isn’t going away.

Tits and cocks at the RSPB

The RSPB’s website runs censoring software: You’re not allowed to say cocks, but tits are alright, apparently.

On a similar note, the BBC’s running the story that Great tits cope well with warming.

(via Liberal England)

FucksYouUpForSure

Remember a few years ago when Microsoft released a music DRM system called PlaysForSure? The idea was that a load of online music stores would sell music in this format, and lots of different MP3 players would support it, and so if a customer bought “PlaysForSure” music they could be sure it would play on their “PlaysForSure” music player.

(Of course, if you want music that really does play for sure, get it in MP3 format, since that is supported by essentially all music players and computers. PlaysForSure, because it’s a DRM system, is intrinsically about preventing stuff from working, rather than making it inter-operable. So Microsoft’s name for their system is essentially fraudulent.)

Anyway, some people fell for the Microsoft lies and bought PlaysForSure music, although the system was never a big success, and Microsoft didn’t support it for their own Zune music player.

But now, Microsoft are turning off the servers which authenticate PlaysForSure music:

Along with that, Microsoft shut down its failed online music store, and now for the kicker, it’s telling anyone who was suckered into buying that DRM’d content that it’s about to nuke the DRM approval servers that let you transfer the music to new machines. That means you need to authorize any songs you have on whatever machine you want — and that’s the only place they’ll be able to reside forever. And, of course, any upgrade to your operating system (say from XP to Vista) and you lose access to your music as well. By now, hopefully, everyone is aware of why DRM is problematic, but it’s nice of Microsoft to give one final demonstration by basically taking away more rights for the music it sold people with the promise that Microsoft would keep the music available.

The moral of this story? Never, ever buy DRM’ed media or any DRM system — the companies selling it will fuck you up the arse as soon as they think it’s in their interests to do so. Instead, get media in an uncrippled format — either buy it, or if it’s not legally available in a non-DRM format, acquire it via a P2P network such as BitTorrent.

About Includipedia

As some of you know, I’m building an inclusionist fork of Wikipedia, called Includipedia.

I’ve added some content to Includipedia’s about page, detailing my goals for the project.

The goals of Includipedia

I have a post up at Includipedia Blog, detailing my goals for Includipedia, my project to create an inclusionist fork of Wikipedia. Here’s a summary:

Includipedia is a for-profit organisation which aims to fund itself by advertising. But although Includipedia is for profit, it’s not just for profit. We have other goals, too: we want to encourage open content, including free software/open source. So we’ll be developing software for MediaWiki and other projects, and giving it back to the community under open source licences. One project we’re particularly interested in is OpenStreetMap, because non-free alternatives such as Google Maps restrict what you can do with the data.

Our long-term goal is to bring all the world’s information to all the world’s people.

I then go on to detail some things that this implies:

Some people cannot afford an Internet connection. It may be that mesh networking will help to solve that problem; if so we can develop or fund suitable mesh networking software.

Another way to help people afford an Internet connection (and other things) is to help them be richer. Perhaps Includipedia could do a tie-in with organisations such as Kiva to allow the businesses they fund to have micro-wikis on the Includipedia site.

Windows Vista copy protection cracked?

Techdirt is reporting that the copy protection on Windows Vista has been cracked:

More than a year after Windows Vista was introduced, hackers have finally developed a clean crack of Windows Vista. There have been a variety of workarounds for Vista’s copy protection before now, but this is the first time someone has figured out a way to install a cracked version that would pass all of Microsoft’s various anti-piracy checks.

Surely the really effective copy protection mechanism on Vista is that it is so crap no-one would want to copy it?

Why a music download tax is a bad idea

From Techdirt:

the biggest reason [...] is the second you do this, plenty of other industries will come out of the woodwork demanding a special fee get applied to internet connections as well. Newspapers that think Google and Craigslist are “stealing” from them will demand a special “news tax.” And then think of all those other industries who claim they’re being impacted by the internet. You’ll have a special auto-mechanic’s tax, to pay for mechanics who are upset about the DIY info found online. The “knitting tax” for all the free knitting patterns online. I understand that AAA may be upset about Google maps. Travel agents want that “travel tax” to pay for all that business that Expedia has cost them. Where does it stop?

Indeed. Everyone will want to be insulated from the cold wind of change that the Internet brings to some business models.