Metacentricities

I admit it - I never read those long legalese agreements on software or websites. It’s just too much of a pain. Well, it might be time to read them.

As you might know, everyone is trying to get into the movie downloading business. Apple just released iTunes 7, with the iTunes store that has movies. And Amazon launched "Unbox" - it’s own movie downloading service.

Well, thanks to Cory Doctorow, and Boing Boing, it turns out that the Amazon Unbox agreement is really, really evil. You basically give them permission to take over your computer, and let them tell you exactly how, and when, to play the movie you supposedly "bought." Right, you are paying them for the right to control what you see, and how you see it.

It turns out that the Unbox software is Windows only, so I won’t be buying any videos anyway. And it’s also true that Apple’s service has it’s own DRM (Digital Rights Management) - but you have much more control of where and when and how you play what you bought. Yes, I’d rather have no DRM - but then again, I don’t really have the desire to own many movies, so I’m not anyone’s optimum customer anyway.

So, I’m going to start reading agreements more closely - and I’d suggest that you stay away from Unbox.

… of something that will get someone in trouble with the copyright police, but for no good reason. This is an inventive, and very funny mashup of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, called "Star Lords." (Link for broadband only, sorry.)

technorati tags: starwars, lordoftherings, mashup, film

I am someone who tends to think that conspiracy theories are sometimes just silly, and generally, gross oversimplifications of a very complex reality. A couple of stories from EFF that came across my e-desk that have made me think up my own conspiracy theory, and it’s not pretty. Here’s the basic information. Clear Channel (yes, those people) was granted a patent by the USPTO for "System and method of creating digital recordings of live performances." EFF says:

OK, so stick with me for a bit. For a while now, a lot of people have been flabbergasted by the patents that the USPTO has granted, particularly that they have granted patents that allow companies to own business processes that often have clear prior art, and that allow them to have control over the creative innovations of others, in ways that are pretty nonsensical. This one is a great example. This patent means that any musician and venue that records then burns a concert CD for sale after the concert has to use their technologies, or be sued for infringement of their patent. Right, this is completely nonsensical, and clearly violates the right of musicians to control their own creative product. I (and many others) had ascribed the actions of the patent office over the last few years as a combination of caving to corporate interests, and ineptitude. I’m starting to let go of the ineptitude - I think they are doing this on purpose.

Corporations of all stripes are in an incessant battle to expand their control of content and its delivery. Also from EFF is the story that the RIAA now says that it doesn’t think that copying a CD that you bought onto your iPod is fair use. That’s right. Further, it turns out that there is an increasing effort to change the rules of internet traffic, and set priorities, and charge more for certain kinds of traffic (limiting, for instance, Skype traffic) or from certain origins (e.g. corporate traffic gets higher priority than, say, this blog.) I’ve always considered these sorts of things to be basically issues of corporations, as is their mission, to continually increase their profits.

But the recent events and wholehearted cooperation of companies like Google, MSN, Yahoo and others to happily censor content in China (which I had also ascribed to the profit motive), as well as the emerging picture of increased controls and limits on the creation and dissemination of creative content, is making me think a lot about what this is all about. I hate to wonder whether or not there is a connection between all of this stuff and the fact that we have one of the most power-hungry and controlling governments in history.

The whole RIAA/MPAA thing had, for a while, made me think that alternatives to the dissemination of music and movies would have to happen - creators would realize that these organizations don’t work in their interest, and start their own companies and distribution methods. This has begun to happen, but the problem is that if the technology is locked down using things like Microsoft’s Trusted Computing which could ultimately control what you can see and hear from your computer and other technology (there are all sorts of controls being built into the new generation of DVD players, that use blue lasers), then it is possible that alternative avenues will be squeezed or locked out. It seems that technology companies have been jumping overthemselves lately to cater to controlling interests, whether it be our government in spying, China in censorship, or hardware and software manufacturers with imbedded DRM.

So, it all adds up to, at best a nasty mess, at worst, complete control of not only how we can use content we own, but complete control of content creation, delivery, and viewing. That’s the conspiracy theory. It’s probably either silly, or a gross oversimplification of a complex reality. It does strengthen my already growing luddite tendencies, though. If they want to control me through technology, I’ll let go of the technology. We can’t get too attached.

technorati tags: patents, eff, clearchannel, recording, music, concerts, technology, government, control, corporations

I’ve talked about the idiotic antics of record companies before. There is the Sony DRM fiasco, the censoring of mashup albums, and now, they are stifling innovation by scaring software developers. The latest case is PearLyrics, that would do a web search for the currently running song in iTunes, then search the web for the lyrics, and then save the lyrics to the mp3 file. Warner music, for some really odd reason, thinks that this is a violation of copyright, and shut them down. I mean really! This is a tool that fans would use. That’s right fans. The people who buy the music in the first place.

This is all completely silly. This is a great way to get people to 1) stop buying music, and 2) make artists realize that the record companies really don’t care about them, and then start new enterprises on their own, to distribute music. In fact, some famous artists are making their own music stores, others are directly connecting with Apple to get their music on the iTunes music store, and independent online music distributors are popping up all over the place.

If record companies want to actually make it into the next decade, they’d better stop this nonsense.

I imagine by now, you’ve heard about the Sony Music CD brou-ha-ha. In the interest of laying it all out for those who might not have heard details, and explain why you should care, try my hand at providing an explanation. In addition, this serves my not-so-noble purpose of procrastinating from reading the Gospel of Mark for tomorrow.

As you probably already know, record companies have been in somewhat of a battle over the course of the last few years against what they see as the danger of illegal music copying. They think that people ripping CDs, and then providing those tracks on networks is why CD sales are dropping. (CD sales are really dropping because people don’t want to pay $14+ for an album with 2 or 3 good songs on it.)

So in their very, very finite wisdom, some record companies have taken to installing varied kinds of copy protection schemes (called Digital Rights Management, or DRM) on their CDs to control your ability to rip tracks from a CD (EFF has, as usual, a fabulous summary.) These have been, uniformly, failures for one reason or another. Some can be defeated with a simple magic marker. Some by other techniques. The latest fiasco is Sony’s software. This is, by far the worst scheme, and, luckily, it has fallen the furthest.

If you played one of these discs, Sony’s DRM is software would install, without your knowledge, what is called a ‘rootkit’ (if you were running Windows. Macs, however, aren’t completely safe.) A rootkit is a nasty beast, because it basically allows for complete control of your computer. Rootkits are things that are the bane of systems administrators - they are used by hackers to gain control of computers. Futher, Sony’s rootkit would phone home about what music you were playing.

People have found that this rootkit opens up security holes, and a trojan horse (a nasty piece of software that masquerades as something benign) has been found that takes advantage of this hole. And, the uninstaller, apparently, opens up security holes. By the way, there are supposedly more than 1/2 million of these rootkits installed, with virus writers salivating (no, they are already working on them) to make viruses that take advantage of the rootkit. It’s apparently very easy.

Bad, bad Sony. The good news is that it seems that the music industry can’t seem to get DRM right (in fact, there are people who think, and I think rightly, that DRM will never work.) Sony has not only stopped making discs with this software, but they have recalled them. You can get yours replaced.

But it gets worse. It turns out, that people have found open source code in the DRM software. So, Sony (or, more accurately, First4Internet, the company that wrote the code) used open source code, without attribution, or without making available their code (a requirement if you use open source code) to create software whose purpose is diametrically opposed to the ethos of open source. They cheated. They used someone else’s intellectual property, in ways that violate the license of that software. Yes, they violated copyright so that they could try to force you not to violate copyright.

First off, I think this will make any record company much more careful about what they try to put on their CDs. I also hope this will make people much more careful about what CDs they stick in their computer. And I hope this will cause a consumer backlash against DRM that will sink it forever into the pit of failed attempts at controlling people.

The hubris of this is amazing to me. They basically allow us to pay them for the priviledge of infecting our computers, and controlling how, when, and on what device we play our music. This doesn’t help the artists, no matter what they say. My hope is that more and more artists will go to places like Magnatune, or distribute their music themselves - which you can do a lot easier now a days than you used to be able to. Sony, I think, is showing us that it’s time for a new paradigm.

I came across this website pretty much by accident. As I mentioned a while ago, in one of my old blog posts on intellectual property, there is a nascent movement of musicians and the like, trying to create an alternative to the recording industry. I found another website that is part of this, but unlike the other sites, this site has a broad range of genres.

It’s called Magnatune, and if you care about the future of music, and your ability to listen to music however, and wherever you like buy something there. Here’s why:

• You can listen to the full songs or albums on the site for free
• You can download an album, in a variety of formats (MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, etc.) completely free of DRM (Digital Rights Management) - that means, you can put it on your iPod, or Zen Micro, or whatever, you can make as many copies as you like, burn as many CDs as you like, without restriction or control.
• The artists get 50% of the price of the album
• You can choose how much to pay for the album (really, no kidding!)
• You can send a link for the download of the album to 3 friends, for free.

I love their motto "we’re not evil." It’s true, they are not, they are exactly the kind of record company that we (and the musicians) need. If we let the present record companies continue, we’ll be spending $20 per album, and will have very limited ability to listen to it however, wherever, and whenever we want - they will have the control.

There is some very nice music on this site. I haven’t explored the range of genres, and it’s true, there isn’t anyone famous on it yet - but there is no risk - you can listen to the whole album for free, and decide for yourself whether you want to buy it. So go, listen, and buy (if you can.)