Last night, Rob posted a very good piece on Apple's new "Gatekeeper" technology, which defaults to warning users of Apple's new Mountain Lion OS that software from companies that haven't been officially recognized by Apple should not be installed (though users can still choose to override it, or turn it off).
But I have one rather large quibble with Rob's piece. He wrote:
The truth is that Macs don't currently suffer much from malicious software, and DRM-esque lockouts are always circumvented. So what's the point of a DRM-esque system for malware prevention?
I agree that DRM is always circumvented, and it is especially circumvented by copyright infringers and malware creators. But I think that Rob has misunderstood the primary value of DRM to technology companies: because many countries' laws prohibit breaking DRM even if you're not doing anything illegal, DRM gives companies the right to sue competitors who make compatible products and services.
The law has always recognized that interoperability is good for competition, markets, and the public. From generic windshield-wiper blades and hubcaps to third-party hard-drives and keyboards and inkjet toner, and software like Pages and Keynote, the law recognizes that there is a legitimate reason to reverse-engineer a competitor's products and make new products that replace, expand and augment them.
As the public outrage SOPA effectively killed SOPA and tens of thousands of Europeans take to the streets to protest ACTA, Canadians need to do their part to counter the inclusion of SOPA-style reforms into their copyright bill and to demand changes to its restrictive digital lock rules. According to documents recently obtained under the Access to Information Act, Industry Canada received thousands of letters of concern about Bill C-61, the 2008 copyright reform bill, the overwhelming majority of which focused on digital lock concerns. Just one month after the bill was tabled, the government had tracked over 27,000 letters and emails.
A year later, the government held its national copyright consultation. It generated enormous public interest with over 8,000 submissions.
Now officials have received over 50,000 emails of concern on Bill C-11 in the past couple of weeks alone, at times receiving upwards of 400 emails per minute.
The public opinion on Bill C-11 is clear. The majority support reform on two key conditions. First, no SOPA-style amendments such as website blocking or expanded liability should be added to Bill C-11. Second, the digital lock rules should be balanced by linking circumvention to actual copyright infringement.
Canadians have been speaking out on copyright reform in general and digital locks in particular for years with widely held views that reflect Canadian sensibilities about balancing protections and consumer property rights. The numbers keep growing and will continue to do so. If you have yet to speak out, write, email or tweet at the ministers and your MP providing your views on Bill C-11, now is the time to do so. If you are following the anti-ACTA rallies this weekend or tracking the C-11 debate in the House of Commons and wondering what you can do, write, email or tweet once more, asking Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore, Industry Minister Christian Paradis and your Member of Parliament: can you hear us now?
Tens of thousands of Canadians have spoken out against proposed copyright reform in recent days that could combine the US DMCA with SOPA to create restrictive digital lock rules along with targeting of legitimate websites and website blocking. Canadians recognize that the bill will have an impact on the legitimate activities of millions, creating barriers to creators, students, journalists, researchers, and the visually impaired. While the government is right when it says there has been wide consultation, the question is whether it has taken the public comments into account and conducted a full analysis of the implications of its current proposal. There is reason to believe that it has not.
When asked about enforcement concerns, Industry Minister Christian Paradis said "enforcing these rights in a given instance, however, is a private legal matter on which the government cannot speculate." This post does some speculating for the Minister, demonstrating how the law will chill freedom of expression and scientific research, jeopardize fair use, and impede competition and innovation.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has selected some of the best submissions from the Copyright Office's review of whether it should continue to be legal in the USA to "jailbreak" your devices in order to make them more suited to their needs. In this post, we hear from a deaf man who jailbreaks his phone so that he can use it as an assistive device at work; a military worker in Kuwait who jailbreaks his phone so he can quickly access the flashlight function to scare off dangerous wildlife near the base; and a nurse whose jailbroken device allows her to "track my performance, treatments used on patients, and the effects of those treatments, much faster with customizations that are not available on a device that is not jailbroken."
A note for Canadians: Bill C-11, Canada's proposed copyright law, has no similar exemption-setting process. That means that if MP James Moore succeeds in passing his legislation, it would be illegal to modify your property in the ways described here.
Kevin McLeod is a deaf man who uses his Android phone — a Samsung Epic 4G — to assist him with communication, record-keeping, and time management. Like many deaf people, he uses video relay service (VRS) software on his phone to “work on a level playing field with hearing peers and have productive and meaningful careers.” He had these comments for the Copyright Office:
I need a phone that can run VRS software through the day without having to recharge every other hour. The stock phone I received can't do that. I had to upgrade to a more powerful battery. Then I installed an alternative version of the Android operating system called CleanGB that removes most of the carrier-installed software. This freed up memory and battery resources I need to stay connected.
We need the ability to modify our devices because manufacturers and carriers can't possibly anticipate all the needs of their customers. We need flexibility to make the most of the terrific tools they build for us. I love the power and connectivity my phone gives me. I love that I can customize it to meet my unique needs.
My latest Publishers Weekly column is "Digital Lysenkoism," a look at the bizarre internal forces that causes people who work at publishers to defend DRM, even though they know it doesn't work.
I also recently chatted with a big-six digital strategist, who explained to me how his employer would soon be sending out all of its digital advanced reader copies (ARCs) as DRM-crippled PDFs. We shared a moment of incredulous silence at this. Most reviewers, after all, get hundreds of times more material than they can ever use. I literally get 100 books in the post for every one that I choose to review, and the idea that reviewers like me will put up with crippled e-ARCs that must be read at one’s desk or on one’s laptop, that we can’t load onto our tablets or e-readers, that generate all kinds of failures in the wee hours of the night, on weekends, or on airplanes when no one is around to offer technical support—well, it’s beyond absurd.
What will happen to these crippled e-ARCs, most likely, is that they will be ignored. This is exactly what happens to most DRM-locked screener copies distributed to voters for major film awards, like the BAFTAs and the Academy Awards. When you have 50 times more movies to consider than you could possibly watch, and when 10% of those movies require you to figure out how to connect a special player to your already overly complex home theater, well, that just makes it easy to exclude 10% of the load.
Michael Geist sez, "Throughout the fall, I ran a daily digital lock dissenter series, pointing to a wide range of organizations representing creators, consumers, businesses, educators, historians, archivists, and librarians who have issued policy statements that are at odds with the Canadian government's approach to digital locks in Bill C-11. While the series took a break over the Parliamentary holiday, it resumes this week with more groups and individuals that have spoken out against restrictive digital lock legislation that fails to strike a fair balance.
Recounting the series to date, it illustrates that no amount of spin can disguise the obvious opposition from groups representing millions of Canadians to the Bill C-11 digital lock provisions. This includes leading business organizations, creators groups, consumer associations, educators, librarians, representatives of the visually impaired, civil liberties groups, archivists, and historians."
General-purpose computers are astounding. They're so astounding that our society still struggles to come to grips with them, what they're for, how to accommodate them, and how to cope with them. This brings us back to something you might be sick of reading about: copyright.
Nicholas from the Participatory Culture Foundation:
Although Amazon tries to push their users towards DRM’ed media, the
new Kindle Fire can in fact play your DRM free videos, if you can
get them on there. Amazon doesn’t make it easy to convert and sync
videos and music to your device without going through their
servers, but a new version of Miro, released today, does just that.
Second, plug in your Kindle Fire with a USB cable and it will
appear in the Connect tab in Miro.
Third, drag any videos or music to the Kindle and they will convert
and sync. That's it!
Note that videos that aren’t purchased from Amazon will appear in
the ‘Gallery’ app on your Kindle, not in the ‘Video’ tab.
Miro is free and open-source software, so if you'd like to help it
reach more devices and add more syncing features, you can <a
href="http://develop.participatoryculture.org/index.php/Main_Page">Join
the project here.
(Disclosure: I am proud to volunteer on the board of the Participatory Culture Foundation)
Gremlin sez, "Sonos recently pushed an update to their once stellar music system which disabled windows DRM. They decided that it was unnecessary to continue to support this feature moving forward. Unfortunately they also pushed this update without warning to many customers, and they are offering no way for those customers to roll back to the previous version. Their answer to those customers effected is that they've made the decision for us. Many customers have been complaining, but it sets a dangerous precedent for them to be able to remove features at will. Today it's a lightly used DRM system (mostly it effects people using Zune Pass at this point) tomorrow maybe it'll be Sirius Satellite, spotify, or something else more people use. We've suggested that we'd be fine with them allowing us to roll back and making the decision ourselves to not take future update but they will not allow this to occur."
It's entirely possible that the decision wasn't Sonos's to make. After all, DRM license agreements routinely provide for "revocation" in which a DRM vendor or licensing body reserves the right to order its partners to discontinue the playback of its DRM for some reason or another. Which is one of the great dangers of DRM: you buy a device with six features today, and tomorrow it has five, or four, or three, or none. The negotiations resulting in these confiscations are confidential, conducted between giant corporations without any input from the people who've bought the equipment and the media to play on it.
I wrote a long, open letter to Wired editor Chris Anderson about this in 1994, when he told me that rejecting DRM was "idealistic" and defended taking a "pragmatic stance" when reviewing technology that had DRM in it. But worrying about what happens when your devices are designed to be remotely deactivated without your consent or knowledge is eminently pragmatic and has nothing to do with idealism, as we keep on learning.
Comedian Louis CK has weighed in with a status report on the first four days of his experiment with independent, DRM-free video distribution. CK spent $170,000 recording live performances consisting of previously unaired material ("every new generation of material I create is my income, it's like a farmer's annual crop") and made it available online direct from a site that he spent a further $32,000 on for $5, without any DRM. In four days, CK recouped the $200,000 outlay and made an additional $200,000, and sales are still holding strong (I just bought a copy).
The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we've sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.
I really hope people keep buying it a lot, so I can have shitloads of money, but at this point I think we can safely say that the experiment really worked. If anybody stole it, it wasn't many of you. Pretty much everybody bought it. And so now we all get to know that about people and stuff. I'm really glad I put this out here this way and I'll certainly do it again. If the trend continues with sales on this video, my goal is that i can reach the point where when I sell anything, be it videos, CDs or tickets to my tours, I'll do it here and I'll continue to follow the model of keeping my price as far down as possible, not overmarketing to you, keeping as few people between you and me as possible in the transaction.
Despite repeated attempts to receive a statement on EA’s current position on their banning procedure, we have only been met with silence for the last fortnight. ... I’m building up quite the portfolio of affected gamers, who find after a forum violation they’re unable to access their Origin games. And within this is a more disturbing trend – those who are finding that their forum bans are, without explanation, becoming permanent bans. Permanent bans from accessing their Origin accounts, their Battlelog accounts, and therefore downloading purchased games, and playing online. Something which obviously raises serious questions about consumer rights, which is of course another angle we’re currently investigating.
Walker points out that even if someone posts "invective-speckled" rants, that should only earn a forum ban, not the complete swiping of entire game catalogs.
For years, DRM advocates scoffed at the idea that it would be used for bullshit like this -- the refrain was always that it was about preventing piracy. But managing rights is what DRM was built to do, so that is what it's used for.
The problem is not that EA has an intentional policy of punitively screwing its customers. It will fix this specific problem, now that enough people have noticed it. The problem is that the machinery of DRM creates perverse incentives for everyone from top executives to forum moderators, and the corporate veil creates moral hazard to go with it. So you never know where the next shit ganache in the chocolate box will be.
It's time for the triennial Copyright Office hearings on exemptions to the anti-circumvention measures in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The Copyright Office will entertain submissions on when and how it should be legal to break DRM. In the last round, EFF successfully petititoned the Copyright Officeto legalize jailbreaking iPhones to enable the installation of software that Apple hadn't approved -- but the Office didn't make it legal to produce or distribute tools for this, nor did they extend the ruling to the iPad.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is asking the Copyright office for an ambitious group of exemptions this time around:
In the exemption requests filed today, EFF asked the Copyright Office to protect the "jailbreaking" of smartphones, electronic tablets, and video game consoles – liberating them to run operating systems and applications from any source, not just those approved by the manufacturer. EFF also asked for legal protections for artists and critics who use excerpts from DVDs or downloading services to create new, remixed works. These exemptions build on and expand exemptions that EFF won last year for jailbreakers and remix artists.
"The DMCA is supposed to block copyright infringement. But instead it can be misused to threaten creators, innovators, and consumers, discouraging them from making full and fair use of their own property," said EFF Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry. "Hobbyists and tinkerers who want to modify their phones or video game consoles to run software programs of their choice deserve protection under the law. So do artists and critics who use short excerpts of video content to create new works of commentary and criticism. Copyright law shouldn't be stifling such uses – it should be encouraging them."
Charlie Stross unloads both barrels on the big six publishers and their insistence on using DRM in connection with their ebooks, arguing that their demands for DRM lock their customers into Amazon's Kindle platform, "handing Amazon a stick with which to beat them harder."
DRM on ebooks gives Amazon a great tool for locking ebook customers into the Kindle platform. If you buy a book that you can only read on the Kindle, you're naturally going to be reluctant to move to other ebook platforms that can't read those locked Kindle ebooks — and even more reluctant to buy ebooks from rival stores that use incompatible DRM. Amazon acquired an early lead in the ebook field (by selling below cost in the early days, and subsidizing the Kindle hardware price to consumers), and customers are locked into the platform by their existing purchases. Which is pretty much how they gained their 80% market share.
An 80% share of a tiny market slice worth maybe 1% of the publishing sector was of no concern to the big six, back in 2008. But today, with it rising towards 40%, it's another matter entirely.
As ebook sales mushroom, the Big Six's insistence on DRM has proven to be a hideous mistake. Rather than reducing piracy[*], it has locked customers in Amazon's walled garden, which in turn increases Amazon's leverage over publishers. And unlike pirated copies (which don't automatically represent lost sales) Amazon is a direct revenue threat because Amazon are have no qualms about squeezing their suppliers — or trying to poach authors for their "direct" publishing channel by offering initially favourable terms. (Which will doubtless get a lot less favourable once the monopoly is secured ...)
The American Library Association has weighed in on Penguin's dispute with Amazon's Kindle library lending program, calling on the publisher to restore access to its books to library patrons. Penguin and Amazon are in dispute over the terms of sale and lending for Penguin titles, but Penguin's response has been to order Amazon to lock down the ebooks that libraries acquired -- using their precious and dwindling collections budgets -- so that patrons can no longer check them out (Update: Amazon says Penguin and Overdrive, the e-book lending service, took the action without Amazon's involvement. See below).
The fact that Amazon is capable of doing (or allowing) this -- the fact that books can be revoked after they're sold -- is a vivid demonstration of the inevitably disastrous consequences of building censorship tools into devices.
“Penguin Group’s recent action to limit access to new e-book titles to libraries has serious ramifications. The issue for library patrons is loss of access to books, period. Once again, readers are the losers.
“If Penguin has an issue with Amazon, we ask that they deal with Amazon directly and not hold libraries hostage to a conflict of business models.
“This situation is one more log thrown onto the fire of libraries’ abilities to provide access to books – in this case titles they’ve already purchased. Penguin should restore access for library patrons now.”
Update: Amazon's Andrew Herdener writes in to say the revocation was not the result of a dispute between Penguin and Amazon, as reported by the ALA. Instead, he says, the action was taken by Penguin and Overdrive, the service that provides library e-book loans for the Kindle platform, without Amazon's involvement. — Rob, 6:10 p.m.
"This has nothing to do with terms between Amazon and Penguin. This decision was not ours, and we did not make any changes in our service (the change, a surprise to us, came from Penguin and Overdrive)"
"Amazon made no changes to its backend -- none. The arrangement for public library lending is between Overdrive and the publishers. Overdrive acquires the rights from publishers like Penguin to loan books to library patrons. Overdrive chose to stop the service that lends the Penguin books to Kindle owners."
Espen sez, "Yesterday, the Norwegian book industry introduced a scheme where they would sell electronic books on little plastic cards, to be inserted in proprietary readers - an astonishingly stupid idea even by their standards. Here is my riff on that idea - and a solution to the 'books as status signals' conundrum."
— Cory
The Guardian just published an investigative piece I've been working on since the summer: "How the BBC's HD DRM plot was kept secret … and why." It contains the previously secret text of a memo that the BBC sent to the UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, explaining why they wanted to put DRM on publicly funded broadcasts.
The British public overwhelmingly rejected this approach, as did archivists, tech companies, activists, scholars, disabled rights groups and others. But Ofcom granted permission anyway, saying that the BBC's secret memo made a compelling case for DRM being in the public interest. Both Ofcom and the BBC refused to disclose what the BBC's arguments had been, declining both press queries and Freedom of Information requests.
Essentially, the BBC and Ofcom were saying that DRM was in the public interest, but it wasn't in the public interest for the public to know why. I acquired a copy of the secret text and, as I think you'll see, it does not contain any sort of compelling evidence in support of DRM. Rather, it makes flimsy and sometimes laughable arguments (for example, the BBC says HBO demands DRM on its programming, but HBO has an exclusive deal with BBC rival Sky, so it won't be licensing new programming to the BBC, with our without DRM). What's more, the BBC's claim that this material was "commercially sensitive" doesn't bear up to scrutiny -- is it really "commercially sensitive" for the BBC to publish the fact that people like to watch movies on TV?
At the end of the day, I'm left with the impression I got the first time I met with Ofcom about this: that Ofcom wanted this and the BBC wanted it, and regardless of the public interest, the evidence, or the law, they'd get it. In my opinion, the secrecy that Ofcom and the BBC deployed here was only there to allow them to say, "Well, it seems difficult to understand why we're doing this, but that's only because we can't tell you about the important, secret stuff."
Here the BBC discusses its plan to accommodate educators, critics and archivists. It plans on establishing a confidential marketplace for more powerful "professional" TV receivers and recorders that can defeat its scrambling system. This bizarre system – creating an entity that would have to manufacture and distribute these devices, after approving the credentials of archivists, critics and scholars – is meant to be kept secret because it makes it clear that it would be easy to defeat the scheme.
So here you have the BBC claiming in one breath that its partners want effective protection from copying, and in the next breath saying that this won't be very effective protection.
Funnily enough, "this will be easy to defeat" is a point that many of the individuals and institutions who formed the majority opposed to this plan made in their statements.
Here's a reading of my short-short story "Authorised Domain," commissioned as part of a package on "the future of the living room."
The judge said I have to write this note and so I am, but I want to put it right at the top that I don't think it's fair.
It begins with Mum and Dad having rows all the time. At first, they tried to hide it from me, but come on, the flat's not that big. When they put on their mean, angry voices, well, I'm not thick. Then they didn't even bother to hide it. Mum'd get at Dad about something, it didn't matter what -- taking out the rubbish or leaving his shoes in the hall or money (money was always good for an hour's moaning). Or Dad would storm into the house and not say a single word to anyone, just sit himself in front of the telly and enter a vegetative state that lasted until everyone had gone to bed. Mum'd make dinner for us two, and I'd go to my room and watch the stuff I'd saved up from the week, my shows, you know, the stuff everyone at school were talking about. Footie, of course, and Celeb Kendo. Had to, yeah? Before it expired, I mean.
It was better when they split, and even better when they divorced. Kids aren't supposed to be happy about their parents' divorce, so call me a bastard, but my parents'd tell you I was right. Some people aren't meant to live together, I guess. Dad had me at the weekends, Mum had me during the weeks. Both of them were much nicer to live with, too. Plus, Divorce Dad was much cooler about things like going to the footy or Alton Towers, and then he'd buy me a takeaway and leave me at home while he went down to the pub.
Canadian Conservative MP Lee Richardson, a member of the Standing Committee on Industry, responded to a letter from a constituent who worried that the new copyright bill C-11 creates penalties for breaking "digital locks" (the software that stops you from copying files, watching DVD movies on Linux, or fixing your own car). The MP's letter said:
If a digital lock is broken for personal use, it is not realistic that the creator would choose to file a law suit against the consumer, due to legal fees and time involved.
In other words, you should go ahead and break the law because you won't get caught. As Michael Geist says, "Copyright reform is supposedly about updating Canada's copyright rules and fostering greater respect for copyright law" -- not being able to break the law with impunity.
Canada's Parliament is debating bill C-11, the latest incarnation of a "modernisation" copyright bill, which contains a very controversial US-style "digital locks" (DRM) rule. Under C-11's digital locks rules, it would be illegal to remove any sort of anti-copying technology, even if you're doing so for a lawful purpose. For example, if a store sold you one of my books with DRM on it, I, as the rightsholder, couldn't authorise you to remove the digital locks (it would even be illegal for me, the creator of the book, to remove the digital lock!).
The debate included MP James Moore, the bill's principle advocate, admitting that digital locks rules were "not the balance that Canadians were looking for," and Industry Minister Christian Paradis saying that this stuff wouldn't be so bad, because, "Many products such as DVDs do not have digital locks and the market is doing its job in that respect." Except, of course, DVDs do have digital locks, and these locks are used to stop Canadians from format-shifting their lawfully purchased movies to their mobile devices, and also block people from watching the DVDs they bring with them to Canada (or receive from family overseas) from enjoying their property in Canada.
The Tories are supposed to be about the sanctity of private property, but they're very enthusiastic about taking away the right to use your property in lawful ways if doing so undermines the profitability of foreign entertainment conglomerates.
The discussion also featured some noteworthy comments from Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore, who admitted:
Bill C-61, as it turned out, was not the balance that Canadians were looking for. We think this legislation achieves the balance that Canadians have come to expect. We tabled Bill C-61, there was the fall campaign, and then we came back. We re-engaged Canadians from the beginning. We went back to square one. We did unprecedented consultation on this legislation. We heard from thousands of Canadians in the process. We went across the country to town halls and we did open, online consultation. We arrived at Bill C-32.
Context: Bill C-61 and C-32 were the earlier incarnations of C-11, and in all three instances the most controversial aspect of the bill was the Digital Lock rules, which have remained intact in C-11.
The Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle -- the latest installment in the Humble Bundle project, which distributes DRM-free games on a pay-what-you-like basis with a portion of each payment earmarked for charity -- has cracked the $1 million mark, with over a day left until the bundle closes.
Pay what you want. Frozen Synapse normally costs $25, but we're letting you set the price! The Frozen Synapse soundtrack is also included with your purchase ($6) and we recently added two more games: TRAUMA ($7) and SpaceChem ($15). Plus, if you pay more than the average price, we'll throw in the entire Humble Frozenbyte Bundle — a $45 value!
Canada's Conservative government is set to bull through its copyright legislation, Bill C-11, which notoriously includes a special protection for "digital locks," making it illegal to remove such a lock even if you're not doing so for any unlawful purpose. That is, under Canada's proposed copyright law, it would be illegal to remove a digital lock from a copyrighted work that you, yourself, have created and own outright.
Michael Geist is running a blog series highlighting different groups of people who stand to lose from this stupid law. These are culled from the responses to the last consultation the Canadian government ran on the subject, in 2009, when Canadians overwhelming voiced their opposition to the plan. First up is Provincial Resource Centre for the Visually Impaired (PRCVI) British Columbia, "which works to assist blind and visually impaired students:"
The Financial Times, which is justly famed for being one the few newspapers that manages to charge for an online version and attract substantial numbers of subscribers, pulled its app from the Apple App Store last June, after Apple announced that henceforth, all transactions taking place in apps would have to pay at 30 percent cut to the company, and Apple would control all subscriber info.
The FT developed an HTML5 app instead, which can be accessed from any browser. They now claim that 700,000 subscribers use the HTML5 version regularly, and that this makes it more popular than the app they once sold through the app store.
The FT pulled its main iPad and iPhone app from Apple store after both parties failed to reach an agreement after months of negotiations.
"App stores are actually quite strange environments," Grimshaw said. "They are cut off from most of the Web ecosystem."
A simple message on the top of the FT's Web site has been an effective marketing tool, he added.
"The world outside the App Store is not cold and desperate. Discovery is no problem at all."
Kevin McLeod is a deaf man who uses his Android phone — a Samsung Epic 4G — to assist him with communication, record-keeping, and time management. Like many deaf people, he uses video relay service (VRS) software on his phone to “work on a level playing field with hearing peers and have productive and meaningful careers.” He had these comments for the Copyright Office:
Gremlin sez, "Sonos recently pushed an update to their once stellar music system which disabled windows DRM. They decided that it was unnecessary to continue to support this feature moving forward. Unfortunately they also pushed this update without warning to many customers, and they are offering no way for those customers to roll back to the previous version. Their answer to those customers effected is that they've made the decision for us. Many customers have been complaining, but it sets a dangerous precedent for them to be able to remove features at will. Today it's a lightly used DRM system (mostly it effects people using Zune Pass at this point) tomorrow maybe it'll be Sirius Satellite, spotify, or something else more people use. We've suggested that we'd be fine with them allowing us to roll back and making the decision ourselves to not take future update but they will not allow this to occur."
The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we've sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.
DRM on ebooks gives Amazon a great tool for locking ebook customers into the Kindle platform. If you buy a book that you can only read on the Kindle, you're naturally going to be reluctant to move to other ebook platforms that can't read those locked Kindle ebooks — and even more reluctant to buy ebooks from rival stores that use incompatible DRM. Amazon acquired an early lead in the ebook field (by selling below cost in the early days, and subsidizing the Kindle hardware price to consumers), and customers are locked into the platform by their existing purchases. Which is pretty much how they gained their 80% market share.
