Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Report: Microsoft bans 1 million Xbox Live players
Players who were caught modifying their consoles to play pirated games have been booted from the popular service, InformationWeek says.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Is Apple Tying All Media to Its Proprietary iPhone Platform?
Tomorrow’s crisis today: Apple’s critics haven’t yet realized that the iPhone App Store has fueled millions in software development efforts to produce content exclusively tied to the company’s proprietary Cocoa Touch mobile platform.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Big Content: Ludicrous to Expect DRMed Music to Work Forever
When Wal-Mart announced in 2008 that it was pulling down the DRM servers behind its (nearly unused) online music store, the Internet suffered a collective aneurysm of outrage, eventually forcing the retail giant to run the servers for another year.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
How to Load Up Your Kindle With Non-Amazon E-books
So you’ve got a Kindle, and you have books on it, and you want to keep those books–no matter what Amazon or a publisher decides you deserve in the future. Your legal options are limited, but you do have some.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Landmark Study: DRM Truly Does Make Pirates Out of Us All
It’s a well-known story by now: Europe, the US, and plenty of other countries have made it generally illegal to circumvent DRM, even when users want to do something legal with the content.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Kindle Hikes Book Prices and Adds to My Ambivalence
Just when I was coming to terms with my ambivalence toward my Kindle e-book reader, Amazon and the publishers have gotten greedy.
I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the device since I bought my first one about 9 months ago.
As a frequent traveler and voracious reader, I’ve found the Kindle to be nearly ideal. I never have fewer than a dozen books in its memory, and they’re always things I want to read.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Consumers Want to Rip, Burn DVDs
Apple’s iTunes makes saving music from CDs onto one’s personal computer a simple process, but doing the same with a DVD is much more complicated endeavor. Most DVDs are encoded with digital rights management technology to prevent copying.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
A Friendly DRM?
The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem announced six new members at the Consumer Electronics Show, taking one more (small) step toward its goal of creating a standard way for consumers to acquire movies and other types of entertainment online.
Monday, September 22, 2008
PlayStation 3 Video DRM: Two Strikes and You’re Out
The Sony Video Store on the PlayStation Network is filled with a good selection of movies, and you can’t beat the convenience of renting or even buying movies from your couch and watching them on your big screen with your PlayStation 3. Renting movies is a joy on the system–although it would be nice to have longer than 24 hours to watch the content–but what happens when you buy a movie?
Monday, September 15, 2008
Did Amazon Delete Spore Reviews? [Updated]
Want to know how not to respond to criticism? By deleting it. Yet it appears that’s what Amazon has done. Earlier this week we wrote about the controversy of EA’s decision to put cumbersome DRM on the highly anticipated video game, Spore. The response was that thousands of people started posting one star reviews of Spore, noting the problems with the DRM.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Gamers Fight Back Against Lackluster Spore Gameplay, Bad DRM
Spore, after more than 10 years of development time, is finally available for the PC and Mac. The game comes from the mind of the talented Will Wright, the man who gave us The Sims and the original SimCity titles.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Microsoft May Build a Copyright Cop Into Every Zune
If you like to download the latest episodes of “Heroes” or other NBC shows from BitTorrent, maybe you shouldn’t buy a Microsoft Zune to watch them on. A future update of the software for Microsoft’s portable media player may well include a feature that will block unauthorized copies of copyrighted videos from being played on it.
Friday, April 18, 2008
NBC Universal: It’s Apple’s Responsibility to Stop Piracy
Sometimes you wonder how the folks at NBC Universal get anything accomplished, when they seem totally unable to accept responsibility for the market challenges they face and demand that everyone else fix NBC Universal’s business-model problems. Remember, NBC Universal has been the main supporter of the idea that ISPs should be responsible for stopping any unauthorized transfer of content. But why take chances on having just one outside party prop up your business model? Now, NBC Universal’s “chief digital officer,” George Kliavkoff, is saying that it should be Apple’s responsibility to stop unauthorized usage by building special antipiracy filters into iTunes.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Who’s Really No. 2?
Wednesday morning I read with some surprise in USA Today that Amazon is “No. 2 in digital [music] sales since opening nearly six months ago.” Amazon’s entry into this market last year was an important milestone in the continuing irrelevance of DRM and the overly restrictive and anticonsumer policies that the music industry has foolishly wielded in this new, digital age. But let’s get one thing straight: outside of iTunes, no one sells more music digitally than eMusic, and we don’t plan on giving up that title anytime soon. So how is it, we wondered, that USA Today came to name Amazon No. 2?
Thursday, January 24, 2008
DRM-Free Music Spells Trouble
I say we’re on the road to ruin. It’s one panic after another, and with each new stopgap plan, the music industry–really the entire digital content industry–digs itself in deeper. Music lovers are dancing in the streets as one major music company, online music service and online retail outlet after another walks away from onerous digital rights management restrictions. They’ll sell you DRM-free music, as long as you accept lower audio quality. Bands like Radiohead and Coldplay are even letting consumers set their own prices.
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