Seen as we keep going on about how DRM is a bad thing it seemed like it’d be a good idea to provide some suggestions about to actually go about avoiding it. Luckily Peter Kirn at Create Digital Music has done most of the work for me in this article. Some of the suggestions are accessible to the non-geek crowd which is going to very important in breaking iTunes Music Store’s very easy-to-use but FairPlay crippled stranglehold.
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Looks like mycokemusic is closing. In 2004 it dominated the UK market. Now with competition from iTunes it’s been forced to close.
Good to see that another DRM heavy music site is forced to close. Voxpolis has made its position on DRM quite clear. As Jonny said here, we need to boycott DRM music sites. Perhaps then more will follow in mycokemusic’s lead.
I’m glad to see that Sweden are going to discuss the issue of intellectual property rights during their election this year. In January the Pirate Party was formed to push the agenda. They’re policies at first included abolishing all patents and decriminalising internet file sharing. This is based on the argument that if you can’t enforce it, then don’t legislate - and as we all know it is very difficult to enforce copyright on the Internet.
However as the General Election has been approaching they’ve moved towards a softer line -with the policy to reduce the lifetime of patents from 25 to 5 years. Sounds sensible to me. Looks like the kind of grouping we could do with in the UK - especially as people like Sir Cliff Richard are pushing for longer royalty payments (as we reported last month).
This is what I like about the European democratic system - if you’re annoyed by something, or don’t just think your politicians are listening to you, you don’t just write a letter to your MP or moan about it in the pub. No, you form your own political party. And the chances are you’ll win a few seats (see Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands). Ok, so it doesn’t make for good government (look at the mess Prodi’s in) but you can make a point. Similar attempts in the UK (Referendum party, Veritas) always seem disappointing to me.
Seems EDS are at it again - failure to deliver, incorrect specifications, overambitious plans. There’s a twist in this tale though. EDS are seeking compensation from the MOD after the latter failed to deliver on contractual obligations. According to the MOD the amount of compensation required is not significant in relation to the total value of the contract but in the context of £4bn “not significant” could mean pretty much anything. When are government bodies going to learn to stop returning calls from EDS salesmen?
Read the whole sorry tale at The Register.
Today’s IHT has some reasonably thorough coverage of the proposed legislation to decriminalize online music sharing/piracy. Seen as this doesn’t seem to be going away I thought I’d add a bit more to my previous comments.
In my opinion, the IHT article fails to cover two points that are important in the debate. Firstly in it’s focus on reaction from politicians and the industry it fails to mention that the new leglislation is great for consumers. No longer will you have to wonder whether that track you downloaded will play on your brand X portable player. DRM does nothing for music listeners at all, it exists solely to protect big business and anything that bring it’s death closer should be welcomed.
The second thing that seems to have been forgotten in the furore is what effect the legislation will have on music distribution at a grass roots level. The proposed method of artist compensation under the new system is to divvy up a tax amongst the major labels with the size of the slice based popularity (there’s a conspicuous absence of technical detail on how to measure popularity in a downloading free for all). The labels will then continue to pay their signed artists according to whatever agreement they signed up to. My worry is that this results in is a system where consumers expect all music online to be free and almost all the money is still feeding to the major labels. If people looking for music online expect it to be free it makes it very difficult for individual artists or very small labels to operate a donation based system of compensation that bypasses the majors. Instead of damaging the big labels (which they seem to be very worried about at the minute) this could end up giving them a government sanctioned iron grip.
Either way, interesting times are ahead.
This will show all those who are sceptical of wind power. For those of who aren’t privledged enough to be able to read The Economist there’s some interesting information about wind on this page.
This wind turbine basically turns conventional turbines on their side, increasing efficiency by up to 20%. Hopefully this will be coming to a field or house near you soon….
French politicians are currently considering whether to legalise music and film downloading and implement a monthly fee to compensate for the lost royalties. The policy has met with opposition from the French government and (surprise, surprise) the recording industry. Some musicians have also come out against the bill. Consumer groups are in favour of the new proposal.
A downloading license has always struck me as being an ideal third way between the current state of affairs where illegal downloading is endemic and the artists get nothing and the course favoured by, for example, the RIAA of restrictive technology barriers backed by draconian laws.
Clearly there would be a number of issues which would have to be cleared up with any such scheme including:
Those certainly aren’t easy questions but if they can be satisfactorily resolved I believe that a download license could be a suitable method for paying artists in the Internet era.
Via The Register.
We’re pretty keen on microgeneration here at Vox Polis so it’s pleasing to see the Tories lending it their backing. David Cameron’s arrival has bought a change in policy focus including taking a look at environmental and energy issues. While you might expect the Tories to be keen on nuclear (big construction contracts = good for the economy) when you start bandying around words like decentralization microgeneration starts to make more sense as a Conservative policy.
Microgeneration is also a good way to appear green without having to back the more unpopular choice of windfarms. The recent rejection of a major new windfarm at Whinash in Cumbria as a result local objections goes to show how difficult large scale renewable schemes can be to implement in practice, at least without serious government backing (which in my opinion the Whinash scheme didn’t have). Interestingly the government don’t seem to have factored in local issues into their nuclear equations. The idea that people will reject a few windmills but will roll over for a 1000 acre nuclear plant seems a little strange to me unless of course the government has a private preference for nuclear and intends to push through planning permissions when the time comes?
Of course whether the encouraging talk will turn into manifesto commitments to subsidise purchases of generation equipment is the real question that has to be asked of the Tories. An answer to that is unlikely before the policy review committees start to come back in a couple of years.
Thanks to DogPatch for spotting the original article.
Today’s Guardian has an article by Adam Webb on the state of DRM protection in the UK. There was rightly outrage when Sony BMG used a rootkit-based system to enforce copy protection on a number of CDs. Thankfully the record labels have yet to make much use of DRM on CDs for sale in the UK. The article doesn’t manage to come to a clear conclusion as to why this might be. The labels are certainly unforthcoming but will say that they have been testing the technology. Hopefully the backlash caused by Sony BMG’s action has caused them to have a bit of a rethink and finally reach the conclusion that DRM only serves to make things difficult for people who are trying to do the right thing by paying for music.
The GM Truths page has now been updated. Lesson 3 discusses the EU’s regulatory framework governing GE crops.