David Coursey, AnchorDesk’s Senior Editor, explains why:
The fatal flaw inside MS’s new Media Center PCs.
This really gets to the heart of the matter: since when did making copies of music to play on your other devices become piracy?
Digital copying rules may change
by Noel C. Paul for the Christian Science Monitor.
In a few years, Americans may not be able to copy a song off a CD, watch a recorded DVD at a friend’s house, or store a copy of a television show for more than a day…
…Currently individuals can legally record TV shows, make digital audio files of CDs, and lend books to friends. Such activity is protected under a federal “fair use” statute, which takes into consideration most consumers’ need for flexibility.
New regulations being discussed significantly erase fair-use rights in the name of piracy prevention. Ultimately, the entertainment industry hopes to charge consumers for what they now do free of charge.
“The only way they can charge you, they realized, is to first take away your legal right, and then sell that right back to you,” says Joe Kraus, president of DigitalConsumer.org, an advocacy group in Washington, D.C.
Looks like you can’t just uncheck the Windows Media Rights Management box after all (see the gif on my “more” page — i’m still dinking around with images in Movable Type)
I just happened to have to reinstall Windows Media Player 7.1 over the weekend (due to my Real One player expiring on me for no apparent reason…More on that experience later in perhaps far too much detail…)
So I took a gander at the EULA while I was installing WMP 7.1 and took a screen grab of the window that wouldn’t let me uncheck the Windows Media Rights Management box (and also states very clearly in writing that Rights Management is a requirement, not an option).
Also, this paragraph of the EULA seems pretty darned relevant. How the heck did “security” get grouped in with “digital rights management” and my having to agree to allow Microsoft to install DRM updates on my computer that might “disable my ability to…use other software on my computer”??:
* Digital Rights Management (Security). You agree that in order to protect the integrity of content and software protected by digital rights management (“Secure Content”), Microsoft may provide security related updates to the OS Components that will be automatically downloaded onto your computer. These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer. If we provide such a security update, we will use reasonable efforts to post notices on a web site explaining the update.
A guy reformatted his hard drive and then found out none of his Windows Media files would work. Turns out that Windows Media Player turns the “copy protection” (copy prevention) on by default when it rips CDs, so when he reformatted his hard drive the player thought he was trying to play the copy protected files on a computer other than the one they had been licensed for.
Let me say this another way: when you rip CDs on a Windows machine using Windows Media Player, it makes a unique identifier for your computer (that has privacy implications, yes, but I’m trying to make another point here).
That unique identifier is associated with a license that is stored separately from the file itself that will only let those files be played back on the one single computer that matches the unique identifier. No other devices. Ever.
(Without a lot of hassle anyway — Without having to backup and restore your licenses on the other computer — or use Microsoft’s Personal License Migration Service (PLMS) — two processes that, to date, have performed less than dependably — according to many a sad music collector….)
And it turns out there is a solution: turn it off! Change the settings on your player for now, and say “no” when it asks you about wanting copy protections (fair use copy preventions) in the future.
See the Guardian story by Jack Schofield:
When you first run Windows Media Player, it will ask if you want to keep copy protection on, and you can turn it off if you wish. If you missed that dialog box, it is still easy to turn off copy protection by going into the Tools|Options menu. Click on the Copy Music tab, and under Copy Settings, uncheck the ‘Protect Content’ box. In previous versions, this box was called the ‘Enable Per sonal Rights Management’ check box.” Turning off copy protection would seem the best idea.
The MPAA’s latest weapon against online piracy comes at the expense of your system’s security — wink wink, nudge nudge, all in the name of protecting the 5% revenue loss claimed by the industry that’s currently under investigation for misrepresenting those numbers anyway…
Theoretically, Ranger is scouring the Internet looking for filenames it believes to belong to pirated files — although its only source of information for the names of those files is a list it gets from the MPAA.
Meanwhile, I wonder what else is the MPAA and Ranger Online might decide to do with all of that private information that its collecting from “peer-to-peer sites” (user’s hard drives) without obtaining permission? Hmmm…
More about Ranger Online and what the hell that’s all about and how it appears that the Motion Picture Industry is about to be taken on the most expensive snipe hunt in its history later, but I thought you’d want to check out this rather informative article (despite its being an obvious-tool-of-mpaa hype-and-propaganda) from the Washington Post:
‘Ranger’ Vs. the Movie Pirates .
From the EFF’s BPDG blog — Hollings: Broadcast Flag Now, By FCC Mandate:
EFF was advised that Sen. Ernest Hollings has written a letter to the FCC advocating immediate implementation of a broadcast flag mandate — even without additional legislation. Hollings apparently claimed that the FCC already has, under existing statutes, the authority necessary to require that all manufacturers comply with BPDG rules.
Here’s the LawMeme discussion along with a nice synopsis by Lisa M. Bowman for CNET:
File-traders in the crosshairs.
Springsteen Protects His New CD’s Online in an Old-Fashioned Way
by Chris Nelson for the NY Times.
The EFF has submitted comments on the BPDG’s recommendations (as manipulated by its co-chairs, apparently).
You can get the EFF’s comments as a text,
PDF or Word document, but the BPDG recommendation is not available to for public view and you can check out the drafts for yourself.
The BPDG “process” has been rife with acrimony, arbitrariness and confusion, to an extent that cannot be fully ascribed to mere haste. EFF believes that the failings of the BPDG process stem directly from BPDG’s efforts to cloak a inter-industry horse-trading exercise in the trappings of a public undertaking, with nominal participation from all “affected industries.” In reality, the representatives were hand-picked by the conveners of the BPDG to minimize any dissent, as is evidenced by the high degree of similarity between the original proposal brought to the group by its conveners and the final report that the co-chairs unilaterally present herein as the group’s findings.
Throughout the process, the absence of any formal charter or process afforded the co-chairs the opportunity to manipulate the rules of the group to suit their true purpose while maintaining its illusory openness, as when the scope of the group’s discussions was summarily expanded to encompass all unauthorized redistribution of feature films, as opposed to unauthorized redistribution over the Internet.
Cory Doctorow has written an editorial for tha SJ Mercury News that provides the best explanation I’ve seen so far at what the hell is going on with this BPDG thing:
Hollywood wants a stranglehold on your digital technology.
The people who fought tooth and nail to keep VCRs off the market will have a veto over all new digital television devices, including digital television devices that interface with personal computers. The next generation of home entertainment systems will include only features that don’t inspire Hollywood’s dread of infringing uses, no matter what the consequences for you, the owner of the device. With today’s VCR, you can record an episode of “The Simpsons” and bring it over to a friend’s house to watch. This “feature” won’t be included on the digital VCRs and DVD recorders of tomorrow until and unless Hollywood executives decide you deserve it — until they decide that the technical means of allowing neighbor-to-neighbor sharing of video won’t open the gate to the Internet piracy bogyman.