- Bruce Schneier has an article on DRM in Windows Vista. Not only does Vista implement extensive DRM, but it also continuously spends CPU time monitoring itself, trying to figure out if you’re doing something that it thinks you shouldn’t. If it does, it limits functionality and in extreme cases restarts just the video subsystem. Not exactly a friendly feature.
- The RIAA sued a woman for allegedly sharing copyrighted material. She had her case dismissed and was awarded attorney’s fees in excess of $50,000. The RIAA, however, filed an appeal, to reconsider the decision to make them pay. They want the judge to rule that an owner of an ISP account is responsible for all activity on that account. Such a ruling could make individuals running open hotspots and/or offering public wireless access liable. The RIAA has tried before to establish such a precedent.
- The Consumerist reports that the RIAA has sent letters to 400 students at 13 universities encouraging them to confess to illegal file sharing and pay a “settlement” at P2PLawsuits.com. The RIAA has limited evidence these students are doing something illegal. They have a link to a PDF of the offending document here. If they don’t pay, the RIAA will subpoena the names of the students they say they’ve caught from the schools’ IT departments.
More on DRM and Illegal File Sharing
This makes me angry. Young people who download music from the internet are too poor to buy music CDs, and if they’re not, then they’re just spending money on one track that gets most airplay along with other songs that they’ve never heard of and can’t judge their value or worth.
And what about the poor YouTube filmmakers who use copyrighted songs as background music for their videos? Will the music industry go after them as well?
Seriously, the RIAA needs to be done away with.