Universal Music Group, the largest record label on Earth (an accomplishment akin to being the world's largest corset-buttoner, horse-shoer, or gutta-percha cable-insulator), has told Apple that it plans not to renew its contract to sell its music via the iTunes Store.

Now, I'm the last guy to celebrate the iTunes Store. Though it is easy to use, almost every penny you spend there ends up hurting you in the long term, by locking you into buying Apple products if you want to go on enjoying your music. That's because the iTunes Store sells mostly DRM-crippled music, tunes that are locked with anti-copying technology. The US Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 makes it illegal to manufacture products that are compatible with DRM-locked music unless you have the DRM vendor's permission. That means that Apple's competitors are only allowed to make compatible products with Apple's blessing. Apple itself relies on the right to make compatible products without this stricture: for example, Apple's popular Keynote software is compatible with presentations made with Microsoft's PowerPoint.

But there's no denying that the iTunes Store is the only successful digital music seller that the majors have tried. They cry piracy all day long, and now Universal wants to shut down the only legit alternative?

It's clear that Universal wants leverage against Steve Jobs so that they can set their own prices, but brinkmanship won't win it for them. Universal already faces an increasingly tough time showing up in Congress and begging for more opportunities to strip everyday Americans of their life's savings (20,000 record industry lawsuits and counting). Going back to DC after shutting down the only successful online Universal retailer will be a fool's errand. "Help us protect our copyrights by suing people who take them without paying, even though we shut down the only store that anyone liked using."

If Universal wants leverage, they need to follow the example of EMI: sell their music without DRM. That will enable any vendor, anywhere, to make products that interoperate with iTunes. You'll be able to play your iTunes music on your Nokia phone, your Creative Labs walkman, your Linux laptop. With a universe of devices, Apple's position as the Wal-Mart of digital music will be weakened. Apple may have the majority of the player market, but Universal can offer its DRM-free music via any retailer it wants, on any terms it wants -- and those tracks will play on the iPod and any other device.

No one buys music for the DRM. If you've set out to buy your music rather than nick it for free, the presence of DRM isn't an enticement to buy more. No one wants music that does less. And anyone who wants DRM-free music can get it in a heartbeat, just by using P2P. You can't lure those people back from the darknet by offering them crippled tunes.

I used to laugh at the idea that the record labels would roll over and die, crushed by their own stupidity. But when this is the best they can come up with, you have to wonder: how much longer can this last? The senior execs are just waiting for retirement, hoping that the business lasts long enough to see them out the door. These companies are filled with younger execs who see their future collapsing as the old men fiddle. Isn't it time that the shareholders dumped the senior teams and turned the companies over to people who care about having a future? Link

See also: iTunes Store will sell ENTIRE EMI CATALOG DRM-free!!11!1ONE!

BB pal Kirsten Anderson was bracelet shopping on eBay when she stumbled upon this lovely image of a gold-plated cuff. How can anyone *not* want this after seeing it worn by this elegant hand model? The seller, "beautifulmiriam10," has put the starting bid at just US$8. From the item description:

Here I have this Nice Very Extra Wide Heavily Gold-Plated Bracelet Bangle/Cuff, Xena or Wonder Women or Casual Style, measures approx, 98mm wide and 61mm in the inside, this is a very extra wide Bracelet, fits on the wrist and wider in the arm, this Bracelet is very Shiny Gold and Captures the light and Reflection of my Camera and everything else, like a mirror.

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Alka Seltzer tag sounds fun: each player wears an Alka Seltzer on necklace, and players run around with hoses/squirtguns trying to wet the others' tablets. As the tablets foam, they drop off the string. The last intact tablet wins. Link

(¡ɐ1oɟɟıɹ 'sʞuɐɥʇ)) ʞuı1 ¡spuǝıɹɟ ɹnoʎ ǝsıɹdɹns .sɹǝʇɔɐɹɐɥɔ ǝpoɔıun buısn ǝdʎʇ noʎ ʇxǝʇ ʎuɐ ʇɹǝʌuı 11ıʍ ʇɐɥʇ ǝʇısqǝʍ ɐ sı dı1ɟ

A Google employee has clarified her offer to use Google's services to defuse the impact of Michael Moore's new movie, Sicko. Lauren Turner is the "account planner, health" for Google, and she made headlines with a post on the Google Health Advertising Blog where she offered the healthcare industry a chance to run ads for anti-Sicko sites alongside Google searches for "sicko."

Today, Turner posted a clarification, stating that her opinions of Moore's movie were her own, and not Google's, and reaffirming the use of advertising to "handle challenges," calling it "a very democratic and effective way to participate in a public dialogue." She went on to say that this view of advertising is the official Google policy, though reiterating that Google is silent on the questions raised by Moore's movie.

But the more important point, since I doubt that too many people care about my personal opinion, is that advertising is an effective medium for handling challenges that a company or industry might have. You could even argue that it's especially appropriate for a public policy issue like healthcare. Whether the healthcare industry wants to rebut charges in Mr. Moore's movie, or whether Mr. Moore wants to challenge the healthcare industry, advertising is a very democratic and effective way to participate in a public dialogue.

Have I mentioned how much I loved this movie? Go see it. Then do something about living in the last industrialized nation in the world without universal healthcare, a situation maintained by a staff of four healthcare lobbyists for every Congressperson.

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See also: Google to HMOs: pay us and we'll defuse "Sicko"

Update: Mike sez, "I thought you might want to know that Google doesn't even allow individuals to purchase ads critical of large companies. In May 2004, I set up a website to criticize the large medical-testing firm Covance. I bought -- and was willing to pay, out of my own pocket -- a Google AdWord so people searching for Covance would find my site. After a few days, Google told me that their 'policy does not permit the advertisement of websites that contain 'language that advocates against an individual, group, or organization'.' So, apparently HMOs criticizing Michael Moore is okay, but random-guy-with-a-website criticizing a large corporation is not okay. 'Democratic,' indeed. (The full text of Google's email to me is here).

It's Canada Day, the day that marks the anniversary of Canadian Confederation on July 1, 1867. We Canadians celebrate it with days off work, beer, and fireworks. It's like July 4, without the revolutionary overtones.

There is no more potent symbol of Canadianness than the National Film Board of Canada's musical short, The Log Driver's Waltz: more than Leonard Cohen's groans, more than Dan Ackroyd's rampant toryism, more than "timbit" jokes about Tim Horton's tragic car accident, The Log Driver's Waltz defines Canada for its expatriate thirtysomethings. Just singing a few bars of this in a crowded space is enough to flush the crypto-Canadians out (Canadians are like axe-murderers, we look just like regular people) in throaty voice. It's even more reliable than stepping on everyone's foot until someone apologises.

Happy Canada Day to my fellow Canadians, both domestic and expatriate.

As a bonus be sure to catch this unforgettable punk cover from Midget Militia. Link

Update: Here's another version, performed by Captain Tractor -- thanks, Heather!

Update 2: Martin sez, "The Log Driver's Waltz was written by Wade Hemsworth, who also wrote Black Fly, seen in another classic NFB short. Wade is the singer in this one. As for flushing out Canadians, my favourite method is Margaret Atwood's. At a fork in the road, put up two signs, one labelled 'Heaven', the other labelled 'Panel Discussion on Heaven'. The Canadians are the ones who go to the panel discussion." Heh. For a woman who called librarians the moral equivalent of car-thieves, that Atwood is pretty funny.

Chris sez, "The Wisconsin Historical Society has a smallish but excellent gallery of about forty covers from late-sixties underground newspapers. I'm a sucker for Robert Crumb, so Gothic Blimp Works #3 was my immediate favorite, whereas I think Space City's 'psychosurgery' cover will probably haunt my dreams." Link (Thanks, Chris!)

See also: Free Press: reproductions of underground papers, 1965-75

Update: Paul sez, "there's a more comprehensive web exhibit (without the same attempt to copyright the images as Wisconsin) at this UConn site."

Wendy Seltzer has a great essay up today about the process by which ICANN is allocating new top-level domains (TLDs, like .com, .net, .org, and so forth). Wendy is the copyfighting civil liberties cyberlawyer who founded Chilling Effects and previously worked with me at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She's served on the ICANN board for years -- this is the US-chartered corporation that oversees the domain name system, the only really centrally governed piece of the entire Internet.

ICANN has been thrashing for years over the creation of more TLDs, like ".sex" -- the idea is to recapture the edenic glory days when all .COMs were companies, all .ORGs .EDUs were educational institutions and all .WS sites were in Western Samoa. A .sex TLD would be overseen so that only porn sites got .sex domains, and so that porn sites would be forced out of the .com/net/org spaces. This merely requires that some perfectly infallible institution be set up to rake in gigantic profits from the sex industry while accurately dividing all material on the web into "porn" and "not-porn." Simple.

Another faction has bigger ideas: they want to blow the lid off of DNS, to allow for the creation of an infinite number of TLDs. Wendy is in this faction and in "Aging the Internet Prematurely," she sets out a stirring call-to-arms for the TLD multiverse.

To trust the market, ICANN must be willing to let new TLDs fail. Instead of insisting that every new business have a 100-year plan, we should prepare the businesses and their stakeholders for contingency. Ensuring the "stable and secure operation of the Internet's unique identifier systems" should mean developing predictable responses to failure, not demanding impracticable guarantees of perpetual success. Escrow, clear consumer information, streamlined processes, and flexible responses to the expected unanticipated, can all protect the end-users better than the dubious foresight of ICANN's central regulators. These same regulators, bear in mind, didn't foresee that a five-day add-grace period would swell the ranks of domains with "tasters" gaming the loophole with ad-based parking pages.

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