A question I’m researching is how companies might be able to use blogs to support important communication functions such as project management, employee relations, and damage control.
All in DRM
I just received in the mail today from Amazon.com a copy of the new Special Collector’s Edition of the 1953 sci-fi classic film, War of the Worlds. This extraveganza of 1950’s ray guns, Martian fighting machines, and gorgeous Technicolor has been a favorite of mine for many years. It’s the only film I know, for example, that features the original jet powered Northrop Flying Wing in one of the military’s futile attacks on the Martians. And those manta ray shaped Martian machines with the flexible “cobra” weapons are just so cool!
But wait — there’s more.
Checking my RSS news feeds this morning I discovered several postings around the Web that seem to say that Sony's original "rootkit" DRM not only hides itself in the bowels of the Windows operating system, it also installs a mechanism whereby, when the CD's "play" command is selected, information is sent back via the web to Sony about that event.
Sony is issuing software patches through the Internet. Mainstream media (such as this morning's Washington Post) have picked up the story. There's no telling how this will spin out. At minimum, it will make more people suspicious of music publishers.
I got an email this morning from Apple announcing the availability of the new Santana album via the Apple music service through iTunes. Since I don't buy through iTunes anymore (I'm concerned about DRM incompatibility and incompatible shifts in the platform in the future) I decided to investigate buying the CD. I know, I've publicly sworn off music CD's due to DRM incompatibility issues, but I've been listening to Santana ever since Woodstock.
What is a "rootkit"? Till this morning I didn't know. Then I read about Sony's use of "rootkit technology" for implementing their Digital Rights Management (DRM) system from their "protected" music CD's.
There's a disagreement on what DRM means. Some think it means "digital rights management." Some think it REALLY means "digital restrictions management."
The European Commission is sponsoring development of a comprehensive DRM solution to support authoring, licensing, and use of digitized content. The project is called TIRAMISU, which stands for "The Innovative Rights and Access Management Inter-platform Solution."
Remember the scene in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey where NASA official Heywood Floyd, on his way to the Moon, stops to read the lengthy zero-gravity toilet instructions? It’s one of the few humorous moments in this film and usually gets a laugh.
There's an interesting article by David Shamah in the September 6 Jerusalem Post titled “DRM Dummies?” In it Shamah describes how the Macrovision protection in his video camera prevented him from using the camera as part of a chain of devices to copy old family videotapes to DVD. (The camera incorrectly decided the signal coming in from his VHS tapes were “copyrighted” and automatically shut down.)
Elsewhere I've written about how online sellers of music CD's have a mixed record on telling customers in advance whether what they've bought really can be used due to built in copy protection. Now the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has published a report on what Apple and others are doing with their DRM schemes applied to the online sale of digital music files.
There's an interesting article in the August 22 online Computerworld magazine called Intellectual Property is Focus at New Job. In it, a newly hired security professional at a computer product manufacturing company, writing anonymously, describe an assignment to figure out how to keep the company's intellectual property, such as engineering drawings and servive manuals, from "walking out the door."
Amazon DOES publish "copy protection" information, after all
The information I received from Amazon.com was faulty. Amazon DOES publish details about the "copy protection" status of individual music CD's after all. Plus, I've iedntified with which CD's Suncomm copy protection technology is used.
I’m not ant-copyright. Copyright owners have a right to do whatever they want with the properties they own and control. But to make a free market operate, there has to be information available about product features that will make products potentially unusable. Sadly, what I see happening is market confusion and a crumbling of the standards that once made it so easy to buy and use recorded music.
Wow, Overstock.com responded in less than a day to my latest question about their selling copy-protected CD's.
For an online retailer to refuse to tell me in advance of a purchase if I can use the product is like a clothes store saying I can buy any pair of pants I want -- but they will not tell me in advance what the size is.
I am surveying online CD vendors to determine their policies about selling CD's with "copy protection" features that prevent certain types of copying.