Right around the time the world’s financial markets started to collapse, back in 2008, RealNetworks, the folks behind RealPlayer, released RealDVD. It was a short-lived piece of software that made making DVD movie backups fairly painless—too painless for Hollywood, which immediately took RealNetworks to court, claiming all sorts of copyright infringement hokum. That’s all in the past now… → Read More
Looks like Apple didn’t learn its lesson with the whole iTunes DRM thing. I suppose that they might consider some things worth DRM-ing and some not, but I think it’s more along the lines of they’ll do it whenever they think they can get away with it. And they seem to think that’s the case with their new e-book store, which will sell books laced with delicious FairPlay DRM. → Read More
It’s time we start implementing DRM on console games. I mean, look at this nonsense. The Xbox 360 version of BioShock 2 leaked yesterday, a full five days before its official release. The same thing happened with Mass Effect 2, which leaked something like six days for the Xbox 360 before its official release. Since publishers are so keen to treat PC gamers like filthy thieves, I say we start… → Read More
For all of its stupidity, the music industry should be commended for relaxing its DRM requirements. Every single song on iTunes is DRM-free, as are the songs on Amazon MP3 and electronic music specialist Beatport. The Zune Marketplace works a little differently, but many of the downloadable songs there are DRM-free, too. But PC game publishers? They’re still bat-shit crazy, as evidenced by the DRM… → Read More
In other, non-Apple news: Ubisoft has lost its mind. Its latest DRM scheme—the first game to use it will be The Settlers 7, curently scheduled for a Marchrelease—will require that you always be online in order to play its games. That’s not a good idea for many reasons.
For example, look at poor ol’ Devin. He’s been fighting Comcast for God knows how long. Needless to say, he’d be SOL… → Read More
As the world turns, the confusion surrounding BioShock 2′s DRM continues to… confuse. 2K Games said that it’s all but eliminating SecuROM for the game’s DRM regime, but that Games for Windows Live will remain. Installation limits? Gone. Well, kinda. Riot, etc. → Read More
Looks like we have ourselves yet another DRM-related controversy for your amusement. The star this time is BioShock 2, the upcoming FPS developed by various 2K studios. The usual suspects abound: SecurROM, limited installations, and Games for Windows Live. → Read More
There has been some talk about the Associated Press’ new system, called hNews for some reason, for protecting its precious copywritten materials from bloggers, pirates and pederasts. The system will include a DRM system that will make sure you can’t cut and paste data from a browser to a blog post, thereby ensuring that no one can steal the AP’s valuable, value-added content. As… → Read More
Remember yesterday when I noted, by way of TorrentFreak, that the RIAA had all but considered DRM to be dead? Not true! Not true at all. → Read More
The chief spokesman for the RIAA, one Jonathan Lamy, has gone on record to say what any normal, not-on-the-RIAA-payroll person has been saying for some time now: “DRM is dead, isn’t it?” Yes. Yes it it. → Read More
We’re all pirates because of DRM. That’s the conclusion of a new UK study—and it’s a long one, coming in at 200+ pages—. The idea here is that the DRM schemes imposed by rights owners do just as good a job at restricting people who have legitimate claims to the material as it does restricting those without any claim at all. → Read More
The BBC has released this helpful infographic to let everyone out there know that DRM isn’t just simple — it’s fun! Of course, you’d have to be a goddamn PhD of doublespeak to make any sense of it, but who isn’t these days? → Read More
Unless you’re like me and buy all your EA games via Steam, you’ve got some serious DRM. And once you uninstalled the game, you’ve still got DRM. While EA has released a few game specific tools for removing said DRM, they haven’t exactly made it easy have they? Well good news – EA released a tool today that will help you manage the DRM from any game you’ve uninstalled from your system that was… → Read More
In moves which may or may not lead to an outcry from the gamer population at large, both Valve and Microsoft have strengthened their DRM on their PC gaming platforms. Whether these changes will simply curb piracy, as intended, or whether they will prove a nuisance as other DRM schemes have done historically is yet to be seen. → Read More
J&R over at BBG dissected the iPod Shuffle’s tiny headphone control system and found an unidentified chip, a 8A83E3 that appears to be some sort of proprietary physical control that prevents unauthorized transmission of commands to the Shuffle without an official Apple adapter. If this is true – and it seems old in-line adapters don’t work with the Shuffle, this is kind of a big deal. → Read More
You’d think that the music industry would be grateful for Apple, which, with the launch of the iTunes Store in 2003, pretty much saved its keister. Not so, according to the old gray lady! In the negotiations leading up to tiered pricing and the removal of DRM, Steve Jobs and Sony’s music chairman, Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, got into a little bit of an argument over the phone, which the paper described as… → Read More
Yes, iTunes-purchased songs are no longer encumbered with DRM, but don’t think that gives you free reign to put your songs on your peer-to-peer network of choice all willy nilly. That’s because, while there’s no DRM to prevent you from sharing the songs with other people per se, the songs still have some of your personal information embedded in there. → Read More
You can upgrade your iTunes music and video library right now, if that’s your thing. → Read More
Looks like the gods at Apple have been listening. People have long complained about Apple’s DRM protection on music available on iTunes and the inability to download songs to the iPhone over 3G (I mean come on). That might change tomorrow. → Read More
Not only are EA games going to be released on Steam henceforth—in and of itself a big deal—but the games will be totally free of DRM. It seems the largest video games publisher has learned its lesson, and the hard way: legitimate gamers (that is, non-pirates) want nothing to do with digital rights management. → Read More
Oh my. I like the “Shame on me” button. I think I’m going to go register my trial copy of WinRAR , which I’ve been “evaluating” for 8 years. A commenter points out that in the full screencap you can see that the guy has an 8-core Mac Pro with 10 gigs of RAM. I think he can afford a $20 program! [via Reddit] → Read More
You may or may not be aware, but there has been and still is a war being waged over Blu-ray DRM. Slysoft announced that they cracked the BD+ algorithm back in March this year and has been including Blu-ray backup with AnyDVD HD since March. That was just eight months after Richard Doherty from Envisioneering Group predicted that BD+ would stand for 10 years. But! Just because BD+ plus has been… → Read More
Paul McCartney’s previous album, Memory Almost Full, may have been, in so many words, complete garbage, but you have to give credit to the man for his latest endeavor, a new album from his electronic-ish band The Fireman. The album Electric Arguments is available as a DRM-free download from the band’s official site. It’s in a bunch of formats, too, including MP3, FLAC and Apple… → Read More
Rumor has it that Apple will start selling DRM free content from Sony, Universal, and Warner starting December 9th. Apple has received much criticism in the past for their strict and rather dictatorial management of iTunes, however this could be a sign of things to come. So what do you think? Is Apple delivering an early Christmas present? Could we really be moving towards a more liberal DRM… → Read More
You know how in trailers of terrible “family” movies there’s always a part where the announcers says, “Here we go again!” in that dumb “enthusiastic announcer guy voice”? Think of that right now, only juxtaposed with the sights and sounds of Liberty City, for it has been revealed that Grand Theft Auto IV uses SecurROM DRM. That’s the same DRM that upset so many would-be… → Read More
It’s no secret that Apple wants everyone to use iTunes, especially to sync with their iPod. I personally can’t stand iTunes and prefer Winamp, and many others share my view but have enjoyed Apple hardware. Some more code-savvy people than myself have in years past determined how to read and write to the proprietary iTunesDB file, allowing non-Apple software to sync with iPods. Apple… → Read More
Poor, wretched EA. First they have to make 600 staff walk the plank, and now they’re being sued all over the place. There are a lot of hackles raised by SecuROM’s secondary effects, like disabling certain drives or legitimate software. A commenter pointed out this page, which lists the current lawsuits (there are four) against EA on this subject. The most compelling one has to be the… → Read More
Did you hear the news? “Norway” has a problem with the DRM used in iTunes, officially. The country’s consumer ombudsman, which sounds a government-subsidized version of Ask Asa, said the follow in his latest report: It’s a consumer’s right to transfer and play digital content bought and downloaded from the internet to the music device he himself chooses to use. iTunes makes… → Read More
Slysoft cracked the BD+ Blu-ray copy protection either a year ago or six months ago (depending on what you consider “cracked.”) That’s all well and good, but it’s not an open source solution; if you wanted to incorporate Blu-ray playback in your indie media player (like VLC or mplayer, which is my favorite) you’d be S.O.L. UNTIL NOW! → Read More
Will Wright, the brains behind Spore, Civilization and The Sims, finally spoke his mind yesterday about the now infamous Spore-DRM brouhaha. It’s a strange reaction, I think. It [the DRM] was something I probably should have tuned into more. It was a corporate decision to go with DRM on Spore… I think one of the most valid concerns about it was you could only install it so many times. → Read More
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