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DRM, Explained

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On December 23, 2008

In Distribution, Law, Tech

I found myself on the phone with a friend the other day, trying to explain to him why he couldn’t simply copy the music from his iPhone to his new computer.  Yes, his iPhone could connect to his new computer, and he’d already paid for the music on his phone, but no, he couldn’t just copy it.  He’d have to start up his old computer, copy a bunch of directories from it to the new computer, and hope that he’d followed my instructions exactly.   He wondered why he couldn’t just sync his iPhone with the new PC.  That’s a good question that more and more people are facing as they discover that they’re living in a world with crippled technology that intentionally makes your life harder – DRM (Digital Rights Management).

I’ve gone on enough about it over the years, so I’ll leave it to Gizmodo this time:

Digital rights management is a corporate pain in the ass that stops you from doing whatever you want with music and movies in the name of fighting piracy. But there’s more to it.

Straight up, you run into DRM pretty much every day. Bought music from three of the four major labels or any TV show from iTunes? Played a game on Steam? Watched a Blu-ray movie? Hello, DRM. If you wanna get technical about it, digital rights management and copy protection are two different, if similar things. Digital rights management is copy protection’s sniveling, more invasive cousin—it isn’t designed simply to make it harder to steal content like straightforward copy protection—you thieving bastard you—but to control exactly how and when you use media.

Gizmodo goes on like that, slashing and burning its way through things that will almost certainly affect your life, like HDCP, CSS, and FairPlay.  What’s all that, you ask?   Gizmodo explains.

Down the Memory Hole

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On December 22, 2008

In Law, Society, Tech

Does anyone at all believe that the White House isn’t engaged in a massive erasing binge right now?

The required transfer in four weeks of all of the Bush White House‘s electronic mail messages and documents to the National Archives has been imperiled by a combination of technical glitches, lawsuits and lagging computer forensic work, according to government officials, historians and lawyers.

It’s a tradition, you know:

Thomas S. Blanton, the National Security Archive director, said controversy surrounding the last-minute handling of e-mails by retiring presidents — including intervention by the courts — is hardly exceptional.

Blanton wrote in a 1995 book that Ronald Reagan tried to order the erasure of all electronic backup tapes during his final week in office; the current president’s father struck a secret deal with the U.S. archivist shortly before midnight on his final day in office to seal White House e-mails and take them with him to Texas; and Clinton asserted in 1994 that the National Security Council was not an agency of the government so he could keep its e-mails beyond public reach.

Blanton said last week that “the situation is exponentially worse” under the current administration because the volume of electronic records at stake from Bush’s tenure is higher than in previous administrations. If some of the records are manipulated, even for a short while, he said, “the problem and the cost to the taxpayers is going to be exponentially worse, [as well as] the delay and the lag time before journalists and historians are going to be able to see this.”

A Fragile Network

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On December 19, 2008

In Distribution, Policy, Tech

Our global communications network can be a fragile thing:

France Telecom observed today that 3 major underwater cables were cut: “Sea Me We 4” at 7:28am, “Sea Me We3” at 7:33am and FLAG at 8:06am.  The causes of the cut, which is located in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia, on sections linking Sicily to Egypt, remain unclear.

Most of the B to B traffic between Europe and Asia is rerouted through the USA.  Traffic from Europe to Algeria and Tunisia is not affected, but traffic from Europe to the Near East and Asia is interrupted to a greater or lesser extent (see country list below).  Part of the internet traffic towards Réunion is affected as well as 50% towards Jordan.  A first appraisal at 7:44 am UTC gave an estimate of the following impact on the voice traffic (in percentage of out of service capacity):
-    Saudi Arabia: 55% out of service
-    Djibouti: 71% out of service
-    Egypt: 52% out of service
-    United Arab Emirates: 68% out of service
-    India: 82% out of service
-    Lebanon: 16% out of service
-    Malaysia: 42% out of service
-    Maldives: 100% out of service
-    Pakistan: 51% out of service
-    Qatar: 73% out of service
-    Syria: 36% out of service
-    Taiwan: 39% out of service
-    Yemen: 38% out of service
-    Zambia: 62% out of service

That’s just three accidental cable cuts.  Imagine if someone actually put their mind to it.

Friday Notes: Cold & Rainy Edition

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On December 19, 2008

In EU, Politics, Society, Tech, UK

The bitingly cold part of DC winter came a lot earlier this year.  I blame that, in advance, for my increasingly bitter mood over the next three months.

Majel Barrett, Gene Roddenberry’s wife – and voice of Star Trek ship computers – died yesterday.  I had no idea.  She just finished up the voice work for the upcoming movie a few weeks ago.

~

Here’s another illustration of why South Carolina is one seriously screwed up place that no person should have to live in, voluntarily.  Short version of the story at the link: batshit insane South Carolina state politician thinks he’s entitled to his seat, despite losing the election, and the South Carolina legislature appears to be considering giving it to him.  I am not even half joking when I say we should set up an Underground Railroad system to help kids escape from that whackjob state.
~

Speaking of batshit insane and kids who don’t deserve it, here’s a story about three undercover cops who bumrushed a 12 year old girl on her front lawn, calling her a prostitute and generally manhandling her.  She fought back, of course, and her parents finally got the police to release her.  You know what comes next, right?  The girl is arrested for assaulting a police officer.   Full story and court case (against the police officers) here.   Great job, guys.

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BoingBoing DDOS’d itself.  Amusing.  (And if that isn’t reason enough to follow the link: more Iraqi Shoe Tosser Animations!)

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It’s not the most technical of explanations, but this is still a neat walkthrough of how Google Earth images are constructed.

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We’re coming up on the ten year anniversary of the adoption of the Euro.  Nice summary history of it here, along with a look at the impact of the adoption of the Euro on Ireland.  A few of you will have noticed (quite painfully, in some cases) that the Pound and Euro have been dancing around parity, lately.  I wonder if Brown’s brave enough to change course and move Britain onto the Euro in such a chaotic economic time.

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James Fallows has a meandering – but quite informative – interview with one of China’s top bankers.  The take away?  “Be nice to the countries that lend you money.”

Getting the Google/Net-Neutrality Story Straight

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On December 15, 2008

In Distribution, Policy, Tech

There’s been no small amount of handwringing over the WSJ’s (uncharacteristically poor) reporting about Google’s attempts to strike caching deals with major ISPs.  Dave Isenberg explains how the WSJ blew it.  Larry Lessig has a few things to say about it, too.

Even Kids (Advocates) Get It: Censorship Doesn’t Save The Children

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On December 1, 2008

In Distribution, Policy, Society, Tech

Boing Boing highlights this story concerning children’s groups pushing back against the Australian government’s plan to filter the country’s access to content on the Internet:

Holly Doel-Mackaway, adviser with Save the Children, the largest independent children’s rights agency in the world, said educating kids and parents was the way to empower young people to be safe internet users.

She said the filter scheme was “fundamentally flawed” because it failed to tackle the problem at the source and would inadvertently block legitimate resources.

Furthermore there was no evidence to suggest that children were stumbling across child pornography when browsing the web. Doel-Mackaway believes the millions of dollars earmarked to implement the filters would be far better spent on teaching children how to use the internet safely and on law enforcement.

AT&T Sponsors New Privacy Policy Group

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On November 17, 2008

In Distribution, Law, Policy, Politics, Tech

The Washington Post has a press release story about the launch of something called the Future of Privacy Forum:

A group of privacy scholars, lawyers and corporate officials are launching an advocacy group today designed to help shape standards around how companies collect, store and use consumer data for business and advertising.

Well, okay.  That’s certainly something that I’d like to see get more attention.  But what does this group bring to the discussion that the Center for Democracy & Technology, EPIC, and the EFF don’t already?  Oh, here’s the answer:

The group, the Future of Privacy Forum, will be led by Jules Polonetsky, who until this month was in charge of AOL‘s privacy policy, and Chris Wolf, a privacy lawyer for law firm Proskauer Rose [ed. note – and also one of AT&T’s law firms] . They say the organization, which is sponsored by AT&T, aims to develop ways to give consumers more control over how personal information is used for behavioral-targeted advertising.

Because AT&T cares about your privacy.   Also from the press release story:

Mike Zaneis, vice president for public policy for the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which represents online publishers such as Google and Yahoo as well as advertisers such as Verizon, said online privacy issues have long been debated and that “having another voice in this area could help.”

Yup.  I think it’s probably a safe bet that we can look forward to this group muddying the waters of most any privacy policy discussion in the near future.  That isn’t to say this is an entirely useless voice – it’s expected to generally argue for “opt-in” tracking – but anything they issue should be viewed with the question of how it will benefit AT&T.

Advancing the Public Interest

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On November 15, 2008

In Tech

I know I risk being all Andy Rooney here, but I think I speak for pretty much all of us in pronouncing this an important step forward.

The Future of Air Travel (?)

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On November 13, 2008

In Personal, Policy, Tech, Travel

Once upon a time, I was trying to gauge interest among a group of friends in splitting the cost of a newly-announced Eclipse 500 jet.  Turns out that my earnestness was a little optimistic, but I still think that we’re likely to see both the production of a (relatively) affordable Eclipse 500-like jet and the development of an alternative to the big-jet spoke and hub travel system in the US.  If this is an area that interests you, author James Fallows is your man.  Start with this post at the Atlantic.

Public Service Lives at Washington Post . . . dot com

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On November 12, 2008

In Distribution, Tech

In perhaps its greatest service to the public since Watergate, the Washington Post WashingtonPost.com’s work resulted in this:

A U.S. based Web hosting firm that security experts say was responsible for facilitating more than 75 percent of the junk e-mail blasted out each day globally has been knocked offline following reports from [WashingtonPost.com blog] Security Fix on evidence gathered about criminal activity emanating from the network.

I think I’m only slightly exaggerating the good involved, here.

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