All I have to say is w00t w00t! Check it out. Here are the most important parts:

…DRM system employs secrets. There is no theory of protecting content other than keeping secrets. In other words, even if one uses the most sophisticated cryptographic locks to protect the actual music, one must still “hide” the keys which unlock the music on the user’s computer or portable music player. No one has ever implemented a DRM system that does not depend on such secrets for its operation.

The problem, of course, is that there are many smart people in the world, some with a lot of time on their hands, who love to discover such secrets and publish a way for everyone to get free (and stolen) music.

…

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right!

… 

Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries.  Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free.  For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard.  The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company.  EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company.  Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace.  Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.

In conclusion, w00t. Now the big-4 have to get on board.

Note: here are some of my past posts on this topic in chronological order: France 1, France 2, Graphical representation of DRM, Examples, Great picture, and  Apple.

Cheers to Tim for sending this too me.

I’m having this flashback to the days of bashing Microsoft. It was so easy and now I’m feeling the same thing about the RIAA/CRIA.

Michael Geist has posted some stats (released by the recording industry) that directly counters some of the CRIA’s reasons for wanting legislated anti-circumvention (among other culture and rights destroying laws):

… CRIA President Graham Henderson was telling the media that the Canadian digital market was not taking off and that “people are simply abandoning the marketplace altogether, and they’ve made the decision they’ll just download the music and worry about how the artist gets paid later.”

Not so. Canadian digital download sales grew by 122 percent last year, increasing from 6.7 million to 14.9 million (digital albums increased by a similar percentage).

Awake at 6AM and posting about digital downloads. Is there a bigger geek in the world? Well… maybe these guys.

p.s. It’s always funny to see who’s hotlinking to you sometimes. Check out this. Scroll about half-way down. There’s my thumb with the fortune.

I found a blog with some answers to many iPhone questions. The answers don’t make it look any better (in general). I also find it funny that there is some ambiguity over if it will have a vibrate/silent mode.

I know this was on Slashdot but I like to have some of my past posts supported by other people on the compu-global-hyper-mega.net (i.e. I like to win :)). Here’s a post about how the most likely large force in supporting DRM is going to be Apple. [sarcasm]Big Surprise[/sarcasm]

I just came across this news byte (ha ha, byte) about the EFF’s case against AT&T. I’m pretty happy:

According to allegations first raised in the New York Times, AT&T allowed the NSA to install traffic monitoring equipment in its San Francisco and other facilities across the nation. With the equipment in place, the NSA is able to sift through large numbers of phone calls in the US. The government argued that airing the allegations contained in the lawsuit would harm the national security interests of the US.

Judge Vaughn disagreed, saying that if the government has been truthful in its disclosures, divulging information on AT&T’s role in the scandal should not cause any harm to national security. And if it hasn’t been truthful? “The state secrets privilege should not serve as a shield for its false public statements,” he wrote. “In short, the government has opened the door for judicial inquiry by publicly confirming and denying material information about its monitoring of communication content.”

I’m glad the courts finally stopped one of the get out of jail free cards the Bush administration has been handing out like candy on Halloween.

On an entirely unrelated note. I recently watched these lectures. Pretty entertaining and interesting if you know anything about computer architecture or what teaching Computer Engineering/Science is like in University. A great quote:

Information hiding is all very good, but students need to have some information before they can start hiding it.

Dr. C. Ravishankar

In conclusion, I’m very happy with my membership in the IEEE Computer Society. Computer geeks of the world, go sign up!

This post is in response to this comment and this blog posting.

I think you’re making a few assumptions:

1. DRM prevents piracy.
2. A music store that doesn’t use DRM is like Napster or will have a real impact on the amount of piracy.
3. Selling music online is a natural monopoly.
4. You don’t want to change technology, ever.

Allow me to address these one at a time:

1. DRM does not stop piracy. For anyone who doesn’t know, a quick public key cryptography lesson and why DRM doesn’t work can be found here. The bottom line? The “attacker” of the crypto is also the intended recipient, this means that you want the attacker to be able to read the content at the same time prevent them from reading the content. Makes sense? No? It shouldn’t.

   I’m sure some of you will say; then why isn’t the DRM on the iTunes Music Store cracked right now? Simple, they obfuscate the key (making it difficult but by no means impossible to read). If all music were DRM I’d be one of the first people to break out my old x86 assembly book to try and figure out how they store the key. See the difference between encoding and encrypting.

2. First, online music stores aren’t anything like Napster and other P2P protocols. A music store allows users to download songs as they are purchased—read PAID FOR. Napster and other P2P protocols place no controls on who can get what, this means you can get content without paying for it. Obviously there is a major difference between P2P and online music stores.

   Second, will an online music stores without DRM have a really impact on the amount of piracy? My vote is for no. Why? Point #1—with or without DRM, I’m going to be able to get my content in an unlocked format somehow.

3. Selling music online is not a natural monopoly. It’s cheap and easy to setup an online music store—the only difficult part is licensing. There is no reason why we couldn’t have a million music stores online (we have a million brick-and-mortar music stores). The only thing that is enforcing the monopoly in the online stores is the DRM.

   When I buy a CD from a brick-and-mortar store, I can do what I want with it—I can play it in any CD player, I can rip it to any mp3 player, and I can make all the copies I want. Conversely when I buy DRMed audio file I can’t do what I want with it—I can’t play it in any mp3 audio playing program, I can’t put it on any mp3 player, and I can’t make all the copies I want.

   An example would better describe the problem: I buy 10 albums from the iTunes Music store, I can only play these songs in iTunes and on my iPod. Later I find an album on a different music store but the songs are DRMed so I can only play them in Windows Media Player and on an iRiver—I don’t buy the album from the second store because I don’t want to have to use 2 different audio playing programs and mp3 players. The iTunes monopoly continues. Without DRM I don’t have this problem I can play my music in anything, on anything.

4. Today Apple (in my opinion) makes some of the best hardware and software in the industry; What about in 10 years? Let’s say that I’ve been buying music from the iTunes Music Store for the last 10 years, I have invested a meager $15/month. $15*12*10=$1800. I decide I don’t like Mac OS X or Windows, I would rather use Linux. My iPod also breaks and I would rather get an iRiver . Guess what? I can’t make the transitions because I would loose all of my music. Is that fair?

I think you have to go through all of the articles on the Apple-France DRM debate and replace all instances of “Apple” with “Microsoft” and see how you like the ideas then.

I know this is already a quick link (see the side bar) but this is something I wanted to give a little more attention to. Check out Michael Geist’s blog posting on a recent CIRA study:

In summary, CRIA’s own research now concludes that P2P downloading constitutes less than one-third of the music on downloaders’ computers, that P2P users frequently try music on P2P services before they buy, that the largest P2P downloader demographic is also the largest music buying demographic, and that reduced purchasing has little to do with the availability of music on P2P services. I’ve argued many of these same things, but now you don’t have to take my word for it; you can take it from the record labels themselves.

I’m pretty sure I’ve been arguing some of this for years–now I have at least one study (sponsored by a record association) that backs me up… I don’t know if this is going to make much of a difference though.