LilBambi’s Blog – BambisMusings

RIAA NAZIS DETERMINED TO DESTROY NEW AND FRINGE MUSIC:

I just got this new directive from the CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) in the USA that applies to all public radio stations. Here’s an excerpt:

“In any three (3) hour period you can transmit up to three (3) different selections of sound recordings from any one CD, but you can transmit no more than two (2) consecutively. Additionally, in any three (3) hour period you can transmit up to four (4) different selections by the same featured artist, or up to four (4) different selections of sound recordings from any set or compilation of CD’s, but you can transmit no more than three (3) consecutively.”

As the Just As We Thought Blog noted — so much for dedicating programs to artists when they die or to honor birthdays.

Sad. They have to feel in total control! That is such an alien concept … controlling music. Music is all about freedom and speaking out, revolution, love, deep thoughts. That is so contrary to control!

I will be so happy when artists finally say, “That’s it! I have had enough of this!”

That will be a truly great day for all music lovers the world over.

Windows 7 Seemingly Blocks Audio Capture (LIfeHacker):

One rather feisty (and—surprise!—Linux-savvy) Slashdot reader writes about his DRM discoveries in Windows 7. Along with complaints about seemingly big-software-friendly firewall access and registration DLLs, the author’s chief discovery is that Windows 7 doesn’t allow for any kind of software audio capture. In other words, if you’ve got one application playing sound, Windows 7 doesn’t seem to allow you to use your same sound card to also grab the audio from that app.

Like one of the commenters said, I hope this is just a Beta issue and one that will be fixed by the time it is released. This is totally ludicrous. There are LOTS of valid, legal captures that can be done.

If this is some draconian DRM crap, Microsoft just did themselves out of a sale from me, and I will strongly recommend my clients move to the Mac.

This would be very disappointing if they didn’t fix this.

I watched the video of the Macworld 2009 Keynote last night by Philip Schiller, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing.

Several things stood out for me. First once I got past Philip Schiller’s initial nervousness, he really did a great job. I am sure it weighted heavily on him when he first got up on stage.

Oh, yes, I did miss Steve Jobs being there but Philip did bring you in after the first few minutes with a similar type of excitement as Steve Jobs.

I am sure many will say he was no Steve Jobs, but Steve couldn’t be there – so that’s irrelevant. Philip did a great job and kept my interest and excitement on the products he was talking about. Which would have been hard ordinarily since hardware wise, there was only one new – upgraded thing.

I have to say I really did like the awesome features of the new iLife and iWork a lot, and the pricing was where it should be and I was very happy to see it! Thanks Apple! Oh, and the iPhone Remote app for Keynote presentations is really kewl too.

And who could be unhappy with iTunes Music Store going totally DRM-free by March and some songs going to 69 cents a song! That part was really good news.

However, in this economy, it’s sad that people will have to pay 30 cents PER SONG to remove the DRM (which sounds like extortion to me) … as TechCrunch pointed out here, that is quite a ‘music tax’ – $1.8 BILLION DOLLARS if everyone (over 6 BILLION songs) who has DRM’d music from the iTunes Store were to use the 1-click to remove the DRM from their entire library of songs. I hope the process is not too difficult to do on a onsey-twosey basis for folks. Cuz I have a feeling many will be having to do it by album or tracks over time, rather than the entire library like they were saying. Unless you had a small library.

Me? I never bought any DRM’d music so no sweat for me.

But will others who might have a BIG library be able to afford it in one fell swoop? Hard to say.

Also, I doubt if, for that money, the file will move from being a lower bit rate 128kbps DRM’s file to a 256kbps DRM-Free file like the iTunes Plus store has been selling.

The 17″ MacBook Pro sounds great as well with many new features. The 7-8 Hour/5 year Battery life sounds great, but I worry about the “being able to charge it 1,000 times.” The Anti-Glare Screen was greatly needed and I am sure will go over very big.

Philip did get me to want all of that … but then … I remembered I needed food on the table, fuel in the heater, and normal utilities to be paid, as well as gas in the car to get to appointments — maybe someday I might be able to consider buying something like that. It’s not your fault Philip, you did great! It’s the economy that sucks.

But then this from someone who hasn’t gotten the iPod Touch she wants yet either! LOL!

NOT IN MY NAME… Artists Against Guilt Upon Accusation:

As the natural world meets the digital … opportunities are opening up for artists to connect with new audiences across the world. However, with the digitisation of media the lines between use and copy have become blurred. Laws regulating the act of copying have failed to keep pace with technology and soon ISPs will be forced to take down internet connections and websites of anyone accused (not convicted) of copyright infringement. Copyright law is now having the effect of limiting artists, restricting businesses, and harming public rights. The Creative Freedom Foundation speaks for artists concerned at this trend and through Our Goals we seek to bring Copyright Law into the 21st Century.

This is in response to Section 92 and happening February 2009 in New Zealand if their Citizens don’t speak up!

“Not In My Name, the CFF campaign for Fair Copyright”

*CFF (Creative Freedom Foundation)

Campaign to Stop File-Sharers Being “Guilty Upon Accusation”

I thought most civilized countries had an ‘innocent until proven guilty’ stance? Maybe not.

Think this can’t happen in the USA or other Western Countries? Think again. Freedom is only as good as the vigilance of it’s Citizens. Laws that are this far reaching can never be good and most certainly can be seriously abused.

Copyright holders can just as easily be on the receiving end of such a law. So artists need to also be very careful what laws you allow to be passed in New Zealand!! It may come back to bite you on the a**.

They apparently both have sold out to the entertainment cartels (movies, games, music, etc.) to prevent you from even making legitimate use of what you buy….meaning on the very computers and display hardware that you pay your hard earned money for!

The funny thing is, MacWorld is playing this up like it’s a good thing:

Apple didn’t just introduce new laptops Tuesday; it also introduced a new term to the vocabulary of Mac users—DisplayPort. The Mini DisplayPort found on new MacBooks, the refreshed Macbook Air and 15-inch MacBook Pros replaces the DVI and mini-DVI interfaces found on older models. But is this another proprietary debacle like Apple’s failed Apple Display Connector (ADC) interface? No.

DisplayPort is, in fact, an open industry standard promoted by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA), the same group that determines standard sizes for flat panel display mounts, for example. And Apple isn’t the only company supporting DisplayPort. HP, Philips, Samsung, Lenovo, AMD, Nvidia, Intel and many other companies have thrown their weight behind the standard, so we’ll be seeing a lot more DisplayPort-compatible devices in the coming years.

But at least MacWorld does at least try to list some of the downsides:

Unless you’re content with the infinitesimal selection of displays that work with DisplayPort right now, you’ll have to buy more gadgets to get your new Mac to work with a DVI or VGA display. You’re going to pay $29 for the privilege of getting such an adapter through the Apple Store. Unless you need a Dual-Link DVI adapter to hook up a Cinema HD Display or another 30-inch LCD panel, that is—that’ll set you back a full c-note, and you’ll be waiting four to five weeks for it, according to the online Apple Store.

What’s more, regardless of whether you buy Apple’s DisplayPort adapter or a third party’s (if you’re lucky enough to find one, that is), you’re going to mess up your desk with more boxes and wires getting that DVI or VGA display to work.

First Microsoft caved under the entertainment cartel’s unreasonable demands and turned Vista OS/hardware into Vista The Enabler. Now Apple’s newest hardware and OS on the new Aluminum laptop computers has turned into Leopard the Enabler … NOT enabling you as the owner of the harware, but enabling the entertainment cartels to say what you can and can’t do on your hardware with movies, music that you buy. And so many hardware companies have also caved!

All so Apple can make a few bucks in the iTunes Store??

Read it and weep:

Apple brings HDCP to a new aluminum MacBook near you

High Definition Content Protection (HDCP)—you can’t live with it, but you practically can’t buy an HD-capable device anymore without it. While HDCP is typically used in devices like Blu-ray players, HDTVs, HDMI-enabled notebooks, and even the Apple TV in order to keep DRMed content encrypted between points A and B, it appears that Apple’s new aluminum MacBook (and presumably the MacBook Pro) are using it to protect iTunes Store media as well.

So what you say? AppleTV already had this, did you know that? Maybe you want to educate yourself a bit, eh? HDCP, DPCP, DisplayPort Content Protection.

Arstechnica continues a little later in the article AFTER explaining one way in which a teacher has already been frustrated by unreasonable unintended consequences of not being able to play a movie on a Mini DisplayPort-to-VGA adapter, plugged into a Sanyo projector that is part of his room’s Promethean system:

The technology in Apple’s MacBooks that prevents a seemingly arbitrary collection of iTunes Store files from being played on HDCP non-compliant devices is perhaps more accurately called DPCP, or DisplayPort Content Protection. As we’ve covered in the past, DisplayPort was designed as an open, extensible standard for computers that offers lower power consumption over DVI (especially in the Mini DisplayPort format that Apple uses on the new MacBooks). But more importantly, DisplayPort also beats DVI in the studios’ books by offering the option of 128-bit AES encrypted copy protection.

And folks at the Apple Support Forums are also complaining about this iTunes movie purchases will not play on external display – HDCP auth error:

Well, I’m surprised there hasn’t been more of a storm over this one already but I expect there will be.

Just got a new MacBook last week and finally found a mini Display Port -> VGA adapter so i could use my 19″ external display. I rented a movie from the iTunes store yesterday and when I tried to play it on my external display, it gave me a warning/error that the display was ‘not an authorized HDCP display’ and it would not play. Plays fine on the small MacBook screen, just nothing external. To make it even worse, i tried all the movies that I have purchased from the iTunes store with the same result… NONE of them will play on anything but the MacBook’s small 13″ screen. This is crazy unacceptable.

Has anyone else run into this yet or have any ideas of something I may be overlooking in order to get purchased movies to play on an external display?

Yep…and I am sure there are many more that will find things they can’t do with what they bought.

Gawd, I hate it when I am right. I knew Apple would sell out to the entertainment cartels like Microsoft did.

Companies that are adopting or plan to adopt DisplayPort Content Protection in their hardware.

And as Wikipedia notes DisplayPort is basically just another standard — more of the same but different — like HDMI, it’s direct competitor:

DisplayPort is a competitor to the HDMI connector (with HDCP copy-protection), the de facto digital connection for high-definition consumer electronics devices. Another competitor is Unified Display Interface,[2] a low cost compatible alternative to HDMI and DVI. However, the main supporter of UDI, Intel Corporation, has stopped the development of the technology and now supports DisplayPort.

Yeah, that should help the new TVs, electronics devices and computers work together, eh?

Well, it looks like we add another set hardware that are never gonna be part of this ladies’ electronics gizmos … unfortunately.

Thanks for nothing Apple.

Sad.

Adobe was bad enough before, now that they own Macromedia (Flash and Dreamweaver, etc.), they aren’t satisfied with owning the most expensive ‘must have’ unfortunately web software — they want more! They want a piece of you and me, and everyone!

Adobe Push DRM for Flash

The immense popularity of sites like YouTube has unexpectedly turned Flash Video (FLV) into one of the de facto standards for Internet video. The proliferation of sites using FLV has been a boon for remix culture, as creators made their own versions of posted videos. And thus far there has been no widespread DRM standard for Flash or Flash Video formats; indeed, most sites that use these formats simply serve standalone, unencrypted files via ordinary web servers.

Now Adobe, which controls Flash and Flash Video, is trying to change that with the introduction of DRM restrictions in version 9 of its Flash Player and version 3 of its Flash Media Server software. Instead of an ordinary web download, these programs can use a proprietary, secret Adobe protocol to talk to each other, encrypting the communication and locking out non-Adobe software players and video tools. We imagine that Adobe has no illusions that this will stop copyright infringement — any more than dozens of other DRM systems have done so — but the introduction of encryption does give Adobe and its customers a powerful new legal weapon against competitors and ordinary users through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Much more in the article!

I say that it’s time for the likes of Youtube.com et al to move to open source Ogg Video!

It’s so sad that when a previously free and open ‘proprietary’ standard gets ‘full of themselves’ that all of a sudden, it’s smash the users and providers till it breaks their backs!

Unfortunately, “Adobe now has an incentive to push the use of DRM: it’s only available to sites that use Flash Media Server 3 software, which starts at over $4,000 (with extra fees depending on the number of simultaneous streams).“

As if that isn’t bad enough, “Users may also have to upgrade their Flash Player software (and open source alternatives like Gnash, which has been making rapid progress, may be unable to play the encrypted streams at all). Third-party software that can download Flash Video, like the most recent RealPlayer, will also break.”

There are lots of good reasons why DRM is not viable. And here are just a few of them from the article:

Finally, there’s a classic suite of arguments against DRM that will be as true for online video as they were for music. DRM doesn’t move additional product. DRM is grief for honest end-users. And there’s no reason to imagine that new DRM systems will stop copyright infringement any more effectively than previous systems.

More in the article.

Also, I think it is very deceptive. Allow folks to make use of a format till it’s ubiquitous! THEN!!! Encrypt it and lock it up! People will ‘THINK’ it’s all the same old Flash as always — very friendly as always. They will have no idea what hit them or their computers.

Totally disgusted about this. IF THEY WERE GOING TO START DOING THIS. They should have created a totally NEW DRM’d video delivery product with a new name so we users could avoid it like the plague, and kept Flash as it was. That would have prevented confusion about what this ‘new’ format was all about, as compared to the well-known Flash format, and just kept Flash as it was.

They quietly started this crap with Flash 9.x. But it’s not till some companies start making use of this new $4,000 DRM nightmare that folks will begin to really see the head of this monster.

I think Google’s Youtube, et al should stop using Flash and go with an open source type of video delivery system. Maybe help the open source Ogg/Theora Video Projects or some of the others that EFF mentioned in their article.

I hope that Canadians all across their great country speak out on this!

Please don’t let your government do to your Citizens what our government has allowed the entertainment cartels to do to us (US Citizens) — using our own laws against it’s Citizens to the tune of 20,000+ lawsuits against its own individual Citizens and more! Backed by our own government agencies which are funded by our own tax dollars.

Don’t let them turn your fair use rights into nothingness as they did here.

Please read about what’s coming up literally around the corner for you in Canada and don’t let it happen to you!

Here are some places to start:

Why am I opposed to the upcoming Copyright bill even before I have seen it? (Digital Copyright Canada). Here is just a snippet from the article:

It has been interesting to watch the membership of the Fair Copyright for Canada facebook group grow, as well as the questions to the Minister of Industry posted to the website for CBC’s Search Engine. There is an obvious question that people ask, which is why we are opposed to a Copyright bill that hasn’t even been tabled yet, and that anyone who has seen it is unable to talk about until it is tabled.

For me it comes down to a statement made to me by staff of Honourable Josée Verner, the current Heritage Minister.

The Government of Canada, led by the Minister of Industry and the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages, is working toward bringing Canadian copyright policy into conformity with the World Intellectual Property Organization Internet Treaties.

I don’t need to see the act to know that it will be harmful to the interests of most creators and other Canadians. The speculation is really a matter of whether the bill will be bad or worse, not whether it can be good.

Much more in the article.

Copyright debate finds no shortage of missionary zeal (Deirdre Mcmurdy, The Ottawa Citizen):

With controversial copyright reform legislation expected as early as this week, it might be worth remembering that bitter, bloody fights have been an integral part of this deeply divisive issue since at least the sixth century.

According to historical accounts, in 561, as many as 2,000 soldiers lost their lives in the battle of Cul Dreimhne, which ensued because of a violent disagreement between St. Finnian of Moville and St. Columba of Iona over St. Columba’s copying of a psalter that belonged to St. Finnian.

When St. Columba was caught and refused to surrender his copy of the manuscript, an enraged St. Finnian took him before the High King of Ireland. St. Columba narrowly escaped death and was exiled to Scotland as a missionary.

While it’s not likely that opponents of the imminent bill will lay siege to Parliament Hill or have anyone exiled, there’s no shortage of missionary zeal swirling around this issue. And if, as expected, it reflects the influence of the powerful American entertainment lobby, there will certainly be backlash if not bloodshed.

That’s principally because copyright is a major point of intersection between culture and money — both of which tend to ignite rather strong feelings and opinions.

More in the article.

New rules to drive up iPod prices? – New copyright rules are coming and it could cost you. (Deirdre McMurdy, Sympatico MSN Finance):

Way back in the day when Cyndi Lauper sang that “money changes everything,” she wasn’t referring to the reform of Canada’s copyright legislation.

But she could have been.

Just as the recent announcement of the terms of the highly-technical spectrum bandwidth auction have a direct bearing on the price consumers pay for mobile telephone and messaging services – and their ability to use the latest technology – changes to copyright law have an equally direct impact on almost every aspect of entertainment we consume

And if, as is generally expected, the new rules reflect the acute pressure to mirror the U.S. model, there’s going to be an awful lot of howling ahead.

That’s because tougher rules could, in a digital age, significantly drive up the cost of downloading and broadcasting music, printing an article from the internet, or going to the movies. Not to mention the cost of your iPod or MP3 player.

More in the article.

Canadian DMCA introduced (Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing):

Deb sez, “Dr. Michael Geist has just blogged that the proposed legislation is on the Notice Paper for the Canadian Parliament for next week. This is a necessary step for any legislation presented to the Parliament. This means it is going ahead. Now is the time to SPEAK UP if you don’t want this restrictive, horrible American-style DMCA in Canada. Please, contact your M.P. via email.”

Better yet, participate in tomorrow’s coordinated campaign to reach out to the elusive Industry Minister Jim Prentice, who is responsible for this legislation. This is especially important if you live in Calgary: we need people who care about this issue to attend the Minister’s open house and ask him some of the 250+ questions that CBC listeners have for him, which he has so far refused to address. Link (Thanks, Deb!)

Quite a few more links from the Boing Boing article at the bottom as well. Don’t forget the comment section where you will find Deb Johnson’s comment with the following Michael Geist’s blog links:

I’m Deb Johnson that’s been posting on Michael Geist’s blog. I’ve gone through the archives of his blog and come up with these 4 blog posts of his that will help explain how we know what is contained within the forthcoming bill.

10 Questions to ask of Minister Prentice
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2435/125/

The Canadian DMCA – what can you do?
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2431/125/

Details begin to emerge on Forthcoming Copyright Bill
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2321/125/

Here comes the DMCA
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2295/125/

Hope this helps explain the worry, and panic, a bit better

HOWTO Fight Canada’s coming DMCA copyright law (Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing):

Canadian copyfightin’ law prof Michael Geist has revisited his list of “30 things you can do to stop the Canadian DMCA” — first posted the last time the Canadian government tried to bring down a US-style copyright law. The US’s approach to enforcing copyright in the digital age has resulted in 20,000 lawsuits against music fans, technology companies being sued out of existence for making new multi-purpose tools, and has not put one penny into the pocket of an artist or reduced downloading one bit. The USA stepped into uncharted territory in 1998 with the DMCA and fell off a cliff — that was reckless, but following them off the cliff is insane.

The Canadian minority Tory government is planning to do just that, first thing in the New Year, with a full-court press for a Canadian DMCA that goes way beyond the US counterpart, making it one of the worst copyright laws in the developed world, with extra-strong anti-circumvention rules that prohibit making and using tools that open up locked digital files, even when those files belong to you.

The last two Canadian Members of Parliament who championed a Canadian DMCA lost their jobs. Good things come in threes.

# Write to your local Member of Parliament. Nothing is more obvious or more important. Letters (which are better than email) from just a handful of constituents is enough to get the attention of your local MP. It is often a good idea to ask the MP to forward your letter to the relevant Ministers. Contact information for all MPs is available here. Online Rights Canada also provides an easy way to write to your local MP.

# Write to the Prime Minister of Canada. Contact information here.

# Write to Jim Prentice, the Minister of Industry. Minister Prentice is responsible for the Copyright Act in Canada. Despite the fact that Minister Prentice trumpeted his pro-consumer approach on the spectrum auction issue, the rumour mill suggests that he supports DMCA-style reforms and has little interest in advocating for consumer concerns. Minister Prentice’s contact information is here.

# Write to Josee Verner, the Minister of Canadian Heritage. Minister Verner is one of the two ministers responsible for copyright policy in Canada. Prior Canadian Heritage Ministers have been perceived to be close to U.S. copyright lobby groups and copyright collectives. Ministry contact information here. Minister Verner’s contact information is here….

Link (Thanks, Ryan!)

Waiting to speak out or just letting it happen will commit Canadians to the same or worse stripping of your Fair Use Rights than has happened here in the United States. Show you are smarter than we are, please!

Please don’t let this happen in Canada. Believe me, you will live to regret it. We Citizens of the United States can guarantee it — from experience — since we have been living with this since 1998. And look at what has happened here — how each year the unintended consequences get worse and worse, all the while entertainment cartels gain more and more control over our own government. We are living in the NEW era of the Robber Barons.

Need proof? DoJ says $222,000 damages in Capitol v. Thomas trial not unconstitutional (Eric Bangeman, Arstechnica):

“[G]iven the findings of copyright infringement in this case, the damages awarded under the Copyright Act’s statutory damages provision did not violate the Due Process Clause; they were not ’so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense or obviously unreasonable,’” concludes the DoJ.

And RIAA: Jammie Thomas has “no basis” to complain about damage award (Eric Bangeman, Arstechnica):

The RIAA has responded to Jammie Thomas’ motion for a new trial or to have the amount of the jury award slashed. In their reply, the record labels argue that since Thomas agreed to the jury instructions and was aware of the possibility of a massive award, she has no basis to challenge the constitutionality of the statutory damages.

After a three-day trial last month, a Duluth, MN, jury found that Thomas willfully infringed on the record labels’ copyrights by downloading and distributing 24 copyrighted recordings. Under the provisions of the Copyright Act, they could have awarded the labels anywhere from $750 to $150,000 for each of the songs. They ultimately settled on $9,250 per song for a grand total of $222,000.

In her motion, Thomas argued that the award was unconstitutionally excessive, citing testimony in UMG v. Lindor (a case that the labels call “unrelated” in their response) that the labels only make about 70¢ per song sold online. Thomas instead would like to see damages limited to those that the labels can actually prove, arguing that any award above the labels’ actual damages is “purely punitive.” At most, statutory damages should be capped at 10 times actual damages.

Be it on your own heads if you are foolish enough to let this monster out of the bag in Canada.

Oh, and don’t forget that the USA tried to tell you Canadians what to do in your own country back in 2005 on this very issue (/. article):

U.S. Rejects Canadian Rejection of DMCA
Posted by timothy on Sun May 01, 2005 04:00 PM
from the spy-vs-mountie dept.
The Internet
P Starrson writes ” Slashdot readers may recall that last month Canadian policy makers rejected the DMCA for Canada. Not so fast apparently — the U.S. Trade Representative has released the annual Section 301 report which each year tells the rest of the world that they need stronger intellectual property protection. This year Canada is a particular target — the U.S. plans to conduct a special review of Canadian policies and explicitly rejects Canada’s rejection of the DMCA. A good summary on what this means from Canadian law professor Michael Geist.”