Tag: DRM

One thing I learned at the Harvard Speedbumps conference is that many people agree that “speedbump DRM” is a good idea; but they seem to have very different opinions of what “speedbump DRM” means. (The conference was declared “off the record” so I can’t attribute specific opinions to specific people or organizations.) One vision of…

Scientific American has published an interview with Leonardo Chiariglione, the creator of the MP3 music format and formerly head of the disastrous Secure Digital Music Initiative. (SDMI tried to devise a standard for audio content protection. The group suffered from serious internal disagreements, and it finally dissolved after a failed attempt to use DMCA lawsuit…

Derek Slater discusses Fraunhofer’s new Light Weight DRM system. Derek is skeptical but states his opinion cautiously, not being a technologist. In any case, Derek gets it right. It’s hard to see much that’s new in this proposal. If we ignore the newly coined LWDRM buzzword and the accompanying marketing spin, we’re left with a…

Reuters reports that a new CD copy-protection technology from Sony debuted yesterday in Germany, on a recording by the group Naturally Seven. Does anybody know how I can get a copy of this CD? UPDATE (12:30 PM): Thanks to Joe Barillari and Scott Ananian for pointing me to amazon.de, where I ordered the CD. (At…

Before the FCC issued its Broadcast Flag Order, I wrote a post on “Reading the Broadcast Flag Rules”, in which I recommended reading the eventual Order carefully since “the details can make a big difference.” I pointed to four specific choices the FCC had to make. Let’s look at how the FCC chose. For each…

Today’s Washington Post runs an odd, self-rebutting story about the sales of the copy-protected Anthony Hamilton CD – the same CD that Alex Halderman wrote about, leading to SunnComm’s on-again, off-again lawsuit threat. The article begins by saying that the CD’s sales had an unusually small post-release drop-off in sales. Sales fell 23% in the…

With the FCC apparently about to announce Broadcast Flag rules, there has been a flurry of letters to the FCC and legislators about the harm such rules would do. The Flag is clearly a bad idea. It will raise the price of digital TV decoders; and it will retard innovation in decoder design; but it…