The Mandelbear's Musings

Ben Jones has a piece about my book, Free Culture, being made available on Kindle, a platform that uses DRM.

In my view, the "free culture" test for a work is whether it is available freely -- not whether it is also available not freely. "Free Culture" is available freely -- meaning, it is licensed freely here. One can put that freely licensed version on a Kindle, freely. I hadn't known my publisher was going to make Free Culture available on the Kindle, but now that they have, I'd be very keen to have a version I can make freely available on the "Free Culture" remix page.

Remember a few years back when Microsoft launched a new type of DRM under the name "PlaysForSure"? The idea was to create a standard DRM that a bunch of different online music download stores could use, and which makers of digital music devices could build for. Except... like any DRM, it had its problems. And, like any DRM, its real purpose was to take away features, not add them, making all of the content hindered by it less valuable. Yet, because Microsoft was behind it, many people assumed that at least Microsoft would keep supporting it. Well, you've now learned your lesson. Playsforsure was so bad that Microsoft didn't even use it for its own Zune digital media device. Along with that, Microsoft shut down its failed online music store, and now for the kicker, it's telling anyone who was suckered into buying that DRM'd content that it's about to nuke the DRM approval servers that let you transfer the music to new machines.

I've already mentioned the concesrt, which I think (after listening to the recording this morning) nwent fairly well -- only two or three major flubs. Moving on to the panels.

I misremembered on Saturday -- I only had three panels. They originally had me down for moderating all of them, but I insisted on no more than one per day. Next tine I'll also remember to make sure I don't have anything that starts after 4pm. It's hard enough squeezing in dinner.

Saturday's panels were, in order, "Open Source" [unremarkable], "Are You Secure?" [which I moderated -- tips on securing your PC; also unremarkable], and "Blogging" [Yeah, I do that. The latest LJ kerfuffle got a mention].

The really fun one was yesterday's panel on DRM [which I moderated]. I also proved to be the panel's resident expert on DRM technology, which I guess isn't too surprising considering what I've been working on recently. [No, not DRM, but secure docunent transmission.] The discussion quickly shifted into the economics of free media distribution, since everybody in the room agreed that the proponents of DRM are fighting a rearguard action against the inevitable. Some interesting input from Scott Sigler, a panelist who's making a living off Creative Commons licensed books, and AJA in the audience.

The most interesting thing to me was the fact that many people who download free copies of a book or song go on to order everything by that artist/author. Shouldn't have been surprising -- I've done it myself. AJA is now thinking about selling boxed sets of Heather Alexander's CDs. I think my idea about selling unmixed Audacity projects as "super singles" interested him as well. That one panel was worth the whole con for me.

The other panel yesterday was the one on History of Filk. Unremarkable, and rather thinly attended.

I wasn't on any panels today, but enjoyed the one on songwriting. And I've been enjoying the concerts, of course. Kat and Kendra's was particularly impressive -- these are kids I've known since they were little; they've become young women with excellent voices. I'm looking forward to hearing more from them.

I missed the final concert yesterday, and will probably miss the last one tonight -- I have to take the Y.D. home at 10:30 so I can get her out of bed in time for summer school. Grumf. And then there's that little matter of our new garbage collection service, which requires us to have the bins out on the curb by 6am in the goddamn morning on Monday! What corrupt political appointee had that brilliant idea?

VISTA'S CONTENT PROTECTION specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history, claims a new and detailed report from the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

"Peter Gutmann's report describes the pernicious DRM built into Vista and required by MS for approval of hardware and drivers," said INQ reader Brad Steffler, MD, who brought the report to our attention. "As a physician who uses PCs for image review before I perform surgery, this situation is intolerable. It is also intolerable for me as a medical school professor as I will have to switch to a MAC or a Linux PC. These draconian dicta just might kill the PC as we know it."

cryptome

Unfortunately Zune’s wireless music sharing is turning out to be one of those features that seemed better when it was just a rumor. While Zune users will be able share music with friends, there’s a catch (isn’t there always). As Jim noted earlier, recipients of shared songs will only be able to listen to them three times or for three days, whichever comes first. It sort of sounds like a really bad tire warranty.

Zune accomplishes this amazingly stupid feat by wrapping shared music in a proprietary layer of DRM, regardless of what format the original content may be in. If Microsoft’s claims are to be believed, this on-the-fly DRM will be seamless and automatic - which must be some kind of first for Microsoft.

On BoingBoing, as usual