connecting*the*dots

(originally uploaded by axb500)

My iPod battery died years ago; it now lives permanently attached to the cigarette lighter in my truck as if on life support.

Until DRM is dead, and I can use the music I’ve bought at the iTunes Music store on a player other than an iPod, screw ‘em both.

Just as we were getting used to how folksonomies can help us find relational information, ‘dem darn kids take it to the next level.

Long gone are the days when protesting corporate bullshit was limited to groups of people gathering on the street outside of a main office. Nowadays, you can protest by simply dropping a single word into the workings of the retail experience itself.

Check out what DefectiveByDesign is doing:

How passé is crafting a product review now that you can group multiple sucky products that share a common sucky trait with a few key strokes? Why tag your frustrations on your blog, when you can hit the fuckers where it hurts the most — in the virtual aisles and checkout lines themselves?

Excuse me while I head over to Amazon to spread my love of hating DRM.

UPDATE: Tag-daddy, Thomas Vander Wal, makes a profound statement on my flickr comment thread.

(via BoingBoing)

(originally uploaded by Bog_King)

ZDNet.uk
Chuck D lays down the law on DRM
by David Meyer

Digital rights management (DRM) has its benefits, but should not overly restrict users, according to musician and mobile entrepreneur Chuck D.

The rapper, who was a founding member of hip hop group Public Enemy and now runs a content service, told delegates at the Mobile Content World conference in London that he had always looked at technology as “something you can apply to a better world if you stay on top of it and don’t let it stay on top of you”.

“[Napster founder] Shawn Fanning revolutionised the way we get music — he doesn’t get the respect he deserves even today,” said Chuck D on Tuesday.

He said he does “believe in some sort of DRM” but pointed out that MP3 was the most popular compression format because it does not limit how the customer can use the file once bought.

“You’ve got artists who are just starting out who are understanding that DRM is a way of life,” Chuck D said, adding that musicians “understand it doesn’t have to be the Pirates of Penzance as it was”, a reference to the free-for-all early days of Napster and similar P2P engines.

The issue of DRM has become increasingly contentious with the growth of new media distribution services. Some see it as a way to protect the intellectual property of content creators, while others see it as unnecessary infringement by distributors on the rights of the consumer.

Speaking to ZDNet UK after his presentation, Chuck D described the current situation with DRM as “just a lot of fucked-up shit“.

[…]

Until the bottom-feeding leetches of the RIAA are kicked out of the music industry, artists and consumers are going to be screwed by DRM.

(via Pete)

Over the years, I’ve spent a bit of my time writing about Amazon.com — ranging from posts critiquing their interaction model and interface design to propping their innovative, explorative iterations that have changed both online commerce and the web in general in extremely positive ways.

So someone, anyone, please explain to me what they’re thinking with this Unbox service model?

Cory Doctorow absolutely dissected their user agreement today, so I won’t spend any energy on that front. Read his article for the lowdown on their attempts of intrusion into your computer and your ownership rights.

After I read his post, I jumped over to Amazon to see for myself what all the bitching was about. Below is a sample Unbox product screen-shot:

(click for larger image)

The first thing I looked for was the user agreement that Cory tore to shreds, and in finding it next to the 1-Click button, something seemed odd.

1-Click isn’t enabled on my Amazon account.

Not jumping to conclusions, I figured that maybe I turned on 1-Click during one of my many visits to Amazon over the past few months, so I navigated over to my 1-Click settings.

Hm, turned off like I thought.

Thinking that there had to be some explanation about this default switch, I dove into their (well designed) help section and pulled up the 1-Click page. Guess what? Not a mention of Unbox anywhere.

So let me get this straight:

• Amazon unleashes Unbox, which installs what is essentially spyware on my computer in order to manage the DRM of the product
• Average users who are used to clicking on the Add to Shopping Cart button and backing out of the sales process if they’d like, are surprised with a no turnaround 1-Click setting
• Once the user buys media from Unbox, they are automatically stuck with abiding by the user agreement, which details how the spyware/DRM software is added to the host computer

Forget tricking people into making a purchase they don’t want — that’s easy to deal with — if I didn’t know any better, I’d venture to say that Amazon initiated the default 1-Click setting in order to get as many people as possible to engage in their crazy ass user agreement and initiate the installation of their software on our machines.

Tell us otherwise, Amazon, or I imagine that you’re about to feel the fury of a bunch of early adopters. And that goes much deeper in affecting your brand than a temporary drop of sales.

Janeé Bolden, SOHH.com
50 Cent In Talks With Apple To Produce Computer Line

“According to recent reports from Forbes, 50 Cent is currently in talks with Apple CEO Steve Jobs to produce a line of low cost computers geared toward inner-city residents.

The latest edition of Forbes magazine includes profiles of both 50 and his manager, founder of Violator Management & Records Chris Lighty who told Forbes that Steve Jobs “is setting a new standard in the music business… Let’s just say we get each other.”

[…]

Positive reaction
Inner city kids eat up 50 Cent’s sound, message and marketing mayhem, so if he can work with Apple — my platform of choice — to create an affordable computer for inner-city residents, hey, all the power to him and Apple.

Negative reaction
With the DRM aspect of iTunes, Jobs — one of my former icons — is turning out to be a control freak. For Chris Lighty, the brains behind the marketing of 50 Cent’s violent image, to say that “we get each other”… I just don’t know. I’d bet that most parents of the kids devouring 50 Cent’s image would rather that he tone down his act.

Just who are these fuckin’ guys anyway?

vnunet.com
RIAA aims to ban CD ripping
by Iain Thomson

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has reversed its position on CD ripping and now wants the practice outlawed.

In a filing to the US government concerning digital rights management the RIAA and other copyright industry associations said the fact that CD ripping is widespread does not make it legal.

“Nor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even routinely granted necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization,” the filing stated.

“In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the MGM v. Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use.”

This is a complete reversal of the RIAA’s previous policy. In last year’s Supreme Court MGM v. Grokster case a representative of the RIAA described ripping a CD and putting it on an iPod as “perfectly lawful”.

“It is no secret that the entertainment ‘oligopolists’ are not happy about space-shifting and format-shifting,” said the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a statement. “But surely ripping your own CDs to your own iPod passes muster.”

Unbelievable. The RIAA is Exhibit A as to why I financially support the EFF. Didn’t we get past this litigious moment in time when we were passing mix tapes between friends in the early 80’s?

Unchanneled, unbundled, uncontrolled music distribution can tremendously benefit three out of the four constituents in the music industry — the fans, artists and labels — if the technology is enabled and monetized properly. Citizen media and file sharing software has already provided the inroads to extrapolating the concept of personal mix tapes by exponential factors, but since the RIAA is a cabal of thug lawyers, knee-deep in the politics of the power structure of the record industry and big business — busy hawking the propaganda of “musicians starving by the thousands” due to copyright infringement — artists are left out of the conversation surrounding their own work.

From the RIAA self-descrption on their About Us page (emphasis mine ):

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. Its mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members’ creative and financial vitality. Its members are the record companies that comprise the most vibrant national music industry in the world. RIAA members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 90% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States.

In support of this mission, the RIAA works to protect intellectual property rights worldwide and the First Amendment rights of artists; conduct consumer industry and technical research; and monitor and review - - state and federal laws, regulations and policies. The RIAA also certifies Gold®, Platinum®, Multi-Platinum™, and Diamond® sales awards, and recently launched Los Premios De Oro y Platino™, a new award celebrating Latin music sales.

The RIAA are suits providing a perceived value service for a constituency of labels. Innocuous transfers, such as cd-rom to iPod, shouldn’t even be a part of the conversation, but the legal hawks at the RIAA need to keep their battle alive, cash in their hours on the job and make further cases for battles in this war, one that is bound to fail.

Why?

When we reach the tipping point for successfully monetizing a post-modern world — where citizen media receives micro-payments for media views and not click-throughs or micro-purchases instead of bundled viewing through industry channels — this argument will simply become moot. As new technological systems for production and distribution are built, the creative talent inside and out of the development community will begin to leverage the services.

• It’s already happening at myspace.com
• Have you seen what you can do with iLife?
• Hell, even I’m a movie director in my spare time

The evolution of citizen production technologies, along with rich forms of free advertising, networking, marketing and sharing delivered by blogs, will not just simply come to a screeching halt.

And that’s why the RIAA is stepping up their “intelligently designed” game.

I tend to sit on the optimistic side of this battle. Explicit, absolute hierarchy expressed via controlled management will not survive this explosion of technological innovation. It simply can’t. For as much energy and resources it takes to create, manage and govern a structured, old-money universe with closed systems of infrastructure, it takes a fraction of such time, energy and resources to release expression into the newly networked ether.

But these facts won’t stop the lawyers of the world from doing their best from stopping it. Check out this snippet from the bio of one of their leaders:

Mitch Bainwol
Chairman And CEO
Recording Industry Association of America

Mitch Bainwol joined the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) as Chairman and CEO in September 2003. As a seasoned policymaker, he is one of the Washington’s most recognized and respected strategists and possesses a unique blend of political, legislative, and communications skills.

The Washington Post recently called Bainwol a “Top D.C. Lobbyist and Man in Demand.” Several years in a row, Capitol Hill’s Roll Call newspaper hailed Bainwol as one of the 50 most influential “politicos” in Washington. He was also named by Entertainment Weekly as one of the most powerful people in show business and Campaigns and Elections magazine named him a “Mover and Shaker.”

[…]

Bainwol is a “recognized and respected strategist” in Washington DC; he’s a lobbyist. Music is reinventing itself from too many directions for him or anyone else representing this controlled system to make it last long-term.

Fuck the RIAA!