Last month, the Consumerist asked if the DRM phenomenon drove well-meaning people to piracy. We invite you to review the story of one man who did so despite his best efforts.

We may not be the right people to discuss DRM. We have never purchased music from an online store and we refuse to buy an iPod. But when hearing something like this…

There I sat, a loyal music fan who has shelled out actual money to a business that is supposed to be having financial problems, and the best they can do is tell me to wander the streets of Seattle looking for different internet providers who might allow me to download the music that I have already paid for, music that I have spent the better part of three house trying to listen to, and which is still unusable?

We tend to think we made the right decision. We rip our music from CDs, make plans to, but fail to convert our old cassettes and vinyl to MP3. But we have withdrawn from online music downloads because of the above…it just seems too complicated to us. And iPods…well…we bought a 1GB Sandisk MP3/WMA flash memory player for $19.99 after rebate. We haven’t had any problems with it.

There are people who are willing to deal with the restrictions of music in order to buy through these companies. We salute them. There are also people who find ways around it, and those who pirate. We wish them luck in their endeavors as well.

In good news, the EMI Group will be selling premium DRM free music via Itunes in May, excepting Beatles tunes. Higher-quality music files, which will play on any computer and any digital-audio player, will not replace the copy-protected EMI music currently sold through iTunes. They will still offer the standard 99-cent iTunes downloads. DRM-free will be 30 cents more. Existing customers will be able to upgrade. Full albums will costs the same, DRM or non-DRM.

Tests by EMI indicated the higher-quality, DRM-free songs outsold the DRM ones ten to one. Steve Jobs of Apple has advocated the elimination of DRM in the past, and this seems to indicate that the recording companies are reconsidering the current situation.

How often do you hear that line?

Australian news reported that Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced on February 20th that standard incandescent bulbs would be phased out within three years. Details of the plan, including costs, will be made available later. It is felt the change could cut greenhouse gases by 800,000 tons a year by 2012.

In Canada, Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick considered banning the incandescent light bulb, following Australia’s lead. After all, one part of the former British Empire can’t be more progressive than another.

And the United States doesn’t want to think Canada could be more progressive than it…so CBS news reports, California may also ban the light bulbs. Most light bulb manufacturers support the phasing out of the bulbs, but at their pace, feeling that it is unnecessary to ban older bulbs to force the issue.

We ourselves are fond of the bulbs, although we do have a few halogens in certain places for which there are not yet better replacements. We’ve been experimenting with dimmable fluorescents of various brands and the technology there continues to improve.

For those of you following, our new favorite place to buy bulbs is now 1000bulbs.com, which may have had our dimmable bulbs backordered, but provided excellent customer service and reasonable pricing on all our needs.

• 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.

The Asbury Park Press reports that Verizon is suing Vonage for patent-infringement, alleging that Vonage has “appropriated the results of years of research conducted by Verizon and its predecessors.” The patents Verizon claims have been violated cover the interfaces between the old phone system and the more modern computer system mimicking it and are essential for providing VoIP phone services that mimic traditional phone service.

Because the patent claims are so broad… Vonage would never be able to operate, nor would any other VoIP service, most likely. Vonage considers it likely that the courts will invalidate the patents.

Lifehacker has a great feature on how to encrypt your web browsing with an SSH Socks Proxy.

1. You’ll need an SSH server. If you don’t have access or can’t get access through a web host, many of which allow this access, you can always run your own.
2. You’ll also need a client. The most popular one for Windows computer is Putty. It is simple to use.
3. Set up your SSH client to establish a tunnel between a local port and a port on the server.
4. Set up your Internet browser to use a Socks proxy.

Now, that seems a bit hard for some people. There are alternatives.

• Tor – Tor is a toolset for those who want to anonymize their internet usage.
• Routers – Various routers can run SSH and even a SOCKS proxy. Most of these are Linux-based routers running custom firmware. More information…

Continuing our coverage of Vista, we present this article, courtesy of Techrepublic on dispelling Vista myths, and our summary of it.

1. You’ll have to buy a new, high-end PC to run Vista – Vista is more processor intensive than XP…even without the fancy interface features…but not only the high-end computers can run it.
2. Vista will solve all of your security problems – Vista’s security is improved…but nothing is perfect.
3. Vista is no more secure than XP SP2 – The biggest improvement is User Account Control…which is an improvement on user security roles. Roles ensure that users only have the rights to modify or access files and services they should have the right to. The problem has always been that third-party software, both in XP and Vista, has always failed to utilize limited accounts to run programs.
4. The only thing new about Vista is the eye candy – Lots of aspects of Vista are now…not just the user interface improvements. Improved productivity applications, file organization tools, and seach tools
5. You can’t dual-boot Vista with another operating system – There are modifications to the boot system compared to previous versions…but that won’t affect your ability to load two operating systems
6. Vista requires (or includes) Office 2007 – It neither requires nor includes it. It is a separate cost. But older Office versions should work.
7. Most old applications and peripherals won’t work with Vista – Newer versions of software are needed to take full advantage of Vista…but Vista does include compatibility mode for older applications. Like XP, Vista will come with a default selection of drivers, various manufacturers will eventually release drivers for much of their product line.
8. You’ll have to buy a non-Home version of Vista if you have a dual core machine – Multiprocessor machines will require the more expensive editions of Vista…but dual-cores are not included in this…as they are counted as a single processor
9. You won’t be able to played ripped music in Vista – Content Protection only comes into play when you are playing protected content. Your own music is not subject to DRM. For more information, here is what Microsoft had to say in their blog.
10. Vista costs a lot more than XP – The equivalent versions of Vista to XP have comparable pricing. The confusing difference is that Vista comes in multiple flavors…all installed from the same disc differentiated by different license codes that determine which is installed. XP came in Home and Pro…with editions like Tablet and Media Center being sold only as OEM products. Vista sells Media Center as Home Premium…which means the general public can acquire it.

We are always looking for free and open-source alternatives to software that we would rather not pay for. Since keeping track of such programs is hard…we recently located Osalt.com…Open Source as Alternatives. Given a common piece of software, ie Photoshop…it will produce a lost of alternatives…ie GIMP.

Certainly useful…although it makes little judgement on the quality of the applications. That is up to you.