Several years ago the Ypsilanti Public Library starting offering its users access to downloadable audio books through a service called Netlibrary.com. Unfortunately that service was riddled with DRM that wasn’t compatible with anything but Windows computers and PlaysForSure media players. Anyone using an iPod or a Mac was out of luck. At least that [...]
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If you’re in the market for a digital music player this season, I would strongly recommend avoiding the new Zune from Microsoft at all costs. Even if you’re one of those people who doesn’t like the ipod (and there are some of you out there, although I’m still not sure why) don’t buy a [...] It looks like Napster is up for sale. The original Napster was the first big peer to peer music file sharing system and was hugely popular at the time. Of course in spite of the big record companies relentlessly suing music fans as well as kids, grandmothers, and people who don’t even have computers, [...] There was a time not so long ago when if someone produced a creative work such as a book, movie, a piece of music or any number of other types, they were able to register a copyright on that work and have a monopoly on profiting from that work for a limited number of [...] Last week Amazon introduced their new movie download service called Amazon Unbox. This is a service that should be avoided at all costs. Amazon has created a service that can’t be used unless you are using windows. If you are using Linux or Mac OS you are in luck because the service doesn’t work [...] Google made their reputation by indexing the content of the the internet. They’ve done some truly remarkable things with search. Their pagerank system although far from perfect does provide some great results. Some time ago they announced a project in conjunction with five of the largest university libraries including the University of Michigan to [...] Oh thank you gods of the RIAA! Previously, the recording industry has indicated in court filings that they didn’t consider ripping of cds to mp3 players to be fair use. That means that if you go to a record store and buy a CD they think it is illegal for you to make a [...] In case you haven’t heard, last week Sony officially announced a six month delay in the launch of the Playstation 3. Who cares you might ask? Well as far as the game console itself is concerned I don’t because I have no intention of buying one. However, from another perspective this case demonstrates again [...] I spotted an interesting article today via Boingboing. If you have a digital audio player such as an ipod or other mp3 player, and you listen to music that has been copy protected, your battery life can be drastically reduced. When music stores add drm to a song they encrypt it with a digital [...] Ed Felten is a professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton University. Prof. Felten has done a lot analysis of copy protection schemes (and I use the word schemes in the negative sense, as in schemes to sell snake oil). Over the years he has been sued several times by companies trying [...] |
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