Personally, I think Steve Jobs is full of it. In fact, I dare him to live up to the rhetoric in his so-called blog post on DRM-free music.

We’ll see what really happens at 1 p.m. GMT. Any guesses?

UPDATE: EMI’s offering their entire catalog (save for the Beatles) online sans DRM. How will the industry respond?

The kicker, after all, is that EMI is charging 30 cents more for the non-DRM tracks, or as EFF puts it, essentially placing a 30 percent surcharge on buying back your rights. Why not just by the DRM-free CD?

Always nice to see an institution-wide boycott of DRM (especially at a U.S. university).

From the MIT Libraries blog:

The MIT Libraries have canceled access to the Society of Automotive Engineers’ web-based database of technical papers, rejecting the SAE’s requirement that MIT accept the imposition of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology.

[.....]

At a time when technology makes it possible to share research more quickly and broadly than ever before, and when innovative automotive research is a matter of global concern, SAE is limiting access to the research that has been entrusted to the society. In addition to imposing DRM on access to the papers for paid subscribers, the SAE also prevents information about its papers from being found through any channel other than the ones they control.

—————-

The entire post is worth reading — it includes faculty and administration comments — and is a good model for universities.

http://news-libraries.mit.edu/blog/archives/388

We’ve all heard out his “Thoughts on Music” and, well, his words seem to have faded into the ether like the latest terror alert.

Free Software Foundation‘s campaign against DRM (defectivebydesign.org) is stepping up and needs our help. On April 1, they’re sending Jobs a letter that we should all sign on to (and add our comments). They’ve got 5,000 sigs already and are hoping to top 7,500!

Click here to sign the letter.

Lets get on Jobs’ ass to follow through on his “pledge” and sign on to the anti-DRM crusade.

A couple tidbits regarding everybody’s best friend, Digital Rights Management:

Gizmodo posted the quick fix to bypass Microsoft Zune’s WiFi sharing DRM

RIAA Declares DRM Dead — Paul Birch, an executive at IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Institutes) said “DRM as we know it is over. There may be Son of DRM but that’s another matter. Right now its dead, the majors are moving towards the new model. The one thing you can be sure of is they will still be at the centre of the world music industry whatever happens. The independents are another matter. As our sector’s share has fallen by almost half in just over twelve months, the new model for us is partnership. It always was, I’m just not sure we got it.” — via Cory.

Cartoon via User Friendly

Learn Out Loud is brilliantly promoting their products by a much linked-to post on their blog titled “The Top 10 Arguments Against DRM.” With over 7,000 audio and video files, they aim “to promote the use of audio and video educational material for personal and professional development,” according to their Wiki. While they’re prices seem competitive with the likes of Amazon, et al, they promise to deliver all digital downloads devoid of DRM. Any online media company that subscribes to the Defective by Design ethos, definitely has the right idea.

In fact, they’re giving away download’s of Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” for free this month.

Here’s the breakdown on their top 10 v. DRM, counted down Letterman-style (read the article here).

10. Whenever you buy DRM’ed content you support the system of DRM
9. DRM fundamentally changes who is control of your media.
8. Your media devices of the future will be significantly different than your media devices of the present.
7. DRM-free content will play on your device of today and your device of tomorrow
6. Often the costs of the DRM are passed along to the consumer as well.
5. There’s a huge hidden cost in trying to sell DRM’ed content
4. DRM adds a lot of costs for content producers
3. Anyone selling content on CD is already selling unprotected files anyway.
2. All it takes is one person to crack the file and it can be made available to everyone.
1. DRM doesn’t prevent illegal use of files, it just makes it a bit more difficult to access them.

WebSlog writes about a run-in with the Play-Away Ready-to-Go Audiobook at Barnes & Noble:

“It’s like all the worst ideas in DRM in one easy-to-pocket package,” writes WebSlog:
It’s a digital audiobook player complete with headphones and lanyard for jaunty ’round-the-neck wear. It has simple controls, no apparent moving parts and contains an entire unabridged book on its internal Flash-based memory chip. [...] You can’t tell from the packaging, but you can send the player back for a 50% discount on your next book (so my next Danielle Steele purchase would only set me back $25 bucks or so). This discounted swapping scheme may be outlined in the product documentation, but it took three clicks at playawaydigital.com to learn about it online.

This is among the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. Why not just put the book on a vinyl record that plays in a self-containing player with a needle that erases the content after it plays it once?

It’s nearly impossible to draw conclusions to Microsoft’s DRM and licensing strategies beyond the obvious realization that they’d like to get away with locking up as much as possible, often unreasonably so.

But Matt McKenzie does a good job in this CW article titled “Vista and More: Piecing Together Microsoft’s DRM Puzzle.” But how much pressure is Hollywood putting on Microsoft behind the scenes (or otherwise) to convince the Corp to tighten the debilitating DRM vice on it’s latest hardware and software and then run with it as a marketable (yet elastically defined) standard?

tuaw has nice screenshots of Zune and what it does in this review.

Has anyone bothered to splurge on one of these so-called iPod-killers? I’d also love to hear exactly what kind of new restrictions come with the 600 dollars Sony PS3 systems.

IS the RIAA working hard behind the scenes to pass Audio Flag legislation to plug the analog hole during the Congress’ lame duck session?

The *battle* is on and earlier this week, the RIAA’s Cary Sherman called BS on the Consumer Electronics Assn’s Digital Freedom docket in this op-ed published on CNET.

CEA President Gary Shapiro fired back almost immediately with this response.

I don’t trust either of these guys, quite frankly, and wonder what everybody else thinks about these association-types apparent attempt to duke it out, not to mention, Microsoft’s consent to sellout to labels for each Zune (despite fair use) sold and whether, in the end any of these efforts will lead us in any direction towards digital freedom for both consumers and creators.

Charles wrote in:

…Seems like the RIAA is looking to make a push to pass the Audio Flag bill during the lame duck session. This will kill any hopes of having a digital radio recorder, much like Tivo, which companies like XM and Sirius are behind. Tonight the RIAA is sponsoring a tech demo/concert/open bar at the Russell Senate building. Special interests hard at work?

I can’t find anything at quick glance on this, but please — SOMEBODY crash it and report back!

More on the Sherman spin:
– /. thread
– Mistaken Goal posts of last week’s “revision of a white paper released in 2003 entitled ‘Background Discussion of Copyright Law and Potential Liability for Students Engaged in P2P File Sharing on University Networks.’”
– Ars Technica

For the second time in about 7 weeks, Apple released an updated one-one-hundredth version of iTunes 7.0. It’s no wonder the stick with numbers and area codes (as opposed to calling it, uh, Lisa) as Apple’s technologically limited music playing app regularly goes through multiple “fixes” per hyper DRM-laden version (Nine since 6.0 was forced upon the public in October 2005. Needless to say, this makes even Microsoft look legit for its attempt to limit patches and fixes to once a month — for an entire OS).

I want to be well-armed when I talk to Apple about its — how you say — unique relationship with the content-creating public and the exponentially huger clientele of limited-licensed viewers and listeners.

If you’re reading this, I need to hear from you.

On one hand, it appears that each iTunes “fix” provides maybe one day of relief and excitement to users who were bugged out by it’s predecessor (do they test these?). And then more issues surface or perhaps the “upgraded” version seems to strip users of access. Thanks to those of you who commented to that end here — from what I’ve read, this hundredth of a decimal version still won’t allow for shared listening on a network of iT6 listeners. Correct me if I’m wrong.

What’s to be made of the sudden iTunes forgot what country I’m in phenomenon?

OneDigitalLife woke up in a Swiss iTunes store.

Laurie at the Unofficial Apple Weblog made it to iTunes France where she couldn’t get any TV. Commenters to that post wound up in Sweden, China and elsewhere. (I can almost hear a new Apple jingle in the making).

Brian also got displaced to Switzerland where he couldn’t download The Office.

Here’s a blogger apparently from Spain who accesses the Internet via a server in the UK. Apparently, after downloading 7.0.2 — whether by some “twisted plot from beyond the Pyrenees” or otherwise, this blogger’s computer suddenly suspects a French-speaking user!

Interestingly, by way of upgrading to .0.2, Scott Gilbertson at MonkeyBites suddenly accesses an iTunes Music Store flush with Spanish-language podcasts, Telemundo broadcasts, and — the World Music section is suddenly iTunes Latino Store?

This Portuguese-language blogger is pissed about being apparently “forced” to take the upgrade. A loose translation of his concluding sentence (it at least embodies his rage throughout the post) is “Apple sucks balls.”

This post may be a tad overly sarcastic, and it is apparent that this is a “widespread bug” that is easy to fix, so no worries. Or does iTunes for some reason really need to find out *for sure* where you live?

Cory bought a new iPod Nano and boy is he sorry:

I bought a new Nano today b/c my old one died and I don’t have time to wait for warranty service before heading to France.

It’s a next-gen Nano. I plugged it into my Powerbook and iTunes 6 said, “I can’t manage that kind of iPod. You have to upgrade to iTunes 7.”

iTunes 7 takes away features I got in iTunes 6 — it breaks the music I’ve paid for.

I’ve seen iTunes updates forced by OS updates, but this is the first time I’ve seen an update forced by buying a new portable player.

iPods/iTunes DRM and related issues may be well documented but I *do* want to hear directly from you. What’s your biggest beef with Apple and the iTunes service. Alternatively, do you just roll with it and accept the standards set by Jobs as you accepted the standards established last decade by Gates? Bring it on! form | e-mail.