The so-called “iPod law” contains reduced fines for file sharing and forced companies to open their DRM specification to enable competition. The French Constitutional Council has declared this aspects unconstitutional. The justification: The “iPod law” violated the Human Right of constitutional protections of property. Mr. Menard, a partner at the Lovells law firm and a Read more »
Thanks to Markus from netzpolitik.org i have found this interesting interview with the DefectiveByDesign campaign. The campaign has received quite a lot of attention in the media. For example the “Bono petition” saw press coverage in more than 115 news papers and news sitest in the USA. Here a answer from DefectiveByDesign to a probably Read more »
DefectiveByDesign, a FSF campaign to eliminate DRM, has written an open letter to Bono the lead singer of the Irish rock band U2 to take a stand against Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). The group has focused on Bono because of his social activism and leadership in the music industry. The aim is to collect 10.000 Read more »
April 26th was the "World Intellectual Property Day" (German). Brigitte Zypries, minister of justice of Germany, said "We need a better sense of right and wrong for ‘intellectual property’" and announced that the protection of ‘intellectual property’ will be the main focus when Germany will held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union Read more »
I have found this interview of Peter Brown, executive director of the Free Software Foundation. He described his work as "to get the message of free software outside the hacker world": When you ask people about free software they should instinctively believe in free software. Just like people say ‘I recycle my cans,’ but don’t Read more »
On the first Open Mind Commons (OMC) Workshop Sun Microsystems released two draft specifications for Digital Restrictions Management (DRM): DReaM-CAS (Conditional Access System) and DReaM-MMI (Mother May I) and a free (as in freedom) prototype implementation of the DReaM-CAS conditional access system. So far it isn’t anything special that the industry works on DRM systems. Read more »
Karsten Gerloff has written about watermarking as a replacement of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). I’m against watermarking as i’m against DRM. Replacing an restriction technology (DRM) with an observing or tracking technology (watermarking) is probably even more harmful if people constantly have to life in fear that a file with their signature could sometime appear Read more »
I have read Marcus and Shanes article about DRM and the interview of Linus Torvalds. I don’t know the motivation of Linus, but i have read many interviews since the first draft of GPLv3 and for my understanding he repeats the same mistake again and again. He compares DRM with protecting your personal data. But Read more »