Changes Is Good

A couple of years ago a kid from Norway, named Jon Lech Johansen, broke the encryption put on DVD’s to stop people from coping them onto their computers. A year or so later he did the same thing to the iTunes music store and made it possible for folks to share their music purchases. [...]

Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious

For some reason folks are acting all shocked that sales of digital music seem to go up when you dont cripple it with DRM. In a piece thats all over the net right now (here, here, here and here) Bloomberg (the news service not the recently independent, non-presidential candidate) [...]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn0QoUpPG80]
A must read article over at Rev2.org on the Digg rebellion and its outcome. Two items that I think are really interesting and deserve more thought:
1) spontaneous user protest
2) siding with your users is a winning strategy
DVD’s, cracked. HD-DVD’s, cracked. Blu-Ray disk’s, cracked. There has to come a point where the movie guys realize that [...]

I know I couldnt believe it myself. But unless everyone from the BBC to the WSJ has gotten it wrong its no joke. Sure it was first reported by the good folks that brought you the RARA joke but thats just a coincidence. The jist of this is that EMI will be releasing DRM free [...]

This amazing bit of news was forwarded by Fred Benenson of Free Culture @ NYU. It’s amazing news and a critical development for the online music space. You can get more information at the RARA site and I’ve duplicated their message in full below without commentary:
From: Press Contact <respectartistaudience@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 31, 2007 [...]

The image below is of unknown authenticity and has been circulating around the net. Its apparently the reciept you get after you’ve have forked over protection money to the Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA), via their recently launched shakedown site. It’s at least good to know that as the RIAA forges ahead on it’s [...]

After Steve Jobs dropped his anti-DRM bomb on the labels people immediately started talking about which label would be the first to wake up to MP3. Early money was on EMI being the first to buckle, largely because they are in the toughest financial position and Ted Cohen used to run the show. We’ll looks [...]

A central tenet of the RIAA/IFPI terror campaign against file downloading has been that file downloading causes the industry to loose billion of dollars a year. This point is hotly debated by many who point out that downloading is more like sampling then buying and has probably resulted in net growth for the industry. [...]

Earlier this week the Chief Evangelical Officer of Apple Computers Inc., Steve Jobs, channeled the spirit of Ronald Regan (media moguls tear down these digital walls) and wrote an open letter (read my post here) aimed at the music barron’s in their Bling’d-out offices. In it he basically says that DRM sucks, iPods rock and [...]

People have been belly-aching about Apple’s iTunes DRM for months, complaining that it’s somehow more restrictive then says Microsoft’s brown brick, the Zune. Steve (El Capitain) Job’s has been largely silent. Until now. Today Apple’s CEO came out swinging. In a letter posted on the Apple site, not only does he [...]