Tag: drm

  • Steve jobs throws the cat among the pigeons!

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    Tom Raftery
    in

    I have written about DRM many times previously and what an evil, anti-consumer, scum-sucking device it is. Many of the comments on these posts disagreed with my position. I really began to doubt my thinking on DRM though when Bill Gates, speaking about DRM seemed to agree with me!: People should just buy a cd…

  • HD DVD DRM cracker interviewed

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    Tom Raftery
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    There is a fascinating interview with muslix64 today on the Slyck.com site. muslix64 is the guy who cracked HD DVD DRM when he released the open source application BackupHDDDVD just before Christmas. HD DVD is one of a pair of new formats of High Definition DVDs (the other format is called Blu-ray). muslix64’s application will…

  • Zune DRM hacked

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    Tom Raftery
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    The Zune has hardly been launched a wet week when an article has appeared on Gizmodo detailing how to share music over wifi without the Zune applying its DRM to the shared music. The hack involves a little bit of work and I wonder just how much longer it will be until someone releases a…

  • FairPlay cracked

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    Tom Raftery
    in

    According to an article on CNN Money, Jon Johansen, the hacker who cracked the DVD encryption, (aka DVD Jon) has now broken the ironically named FairPlay. FairPlay is the Digital Rights Management (DRM) software which Apple puts on songs sold through its iTunes store – this DRM stops songs bought through iTunes playing on devices…

  • Zune to illegally add DRM to podcasts?

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    Tom Raftery
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    Microsoft is to launch the Zune on November 14th according to its PR site. This date is just in time for the American holiday of Thanksgiving. What is not clear from the site is if this is an American launch date of a global launch date. I wrote, in not too glowing terms previously about…

  • Plus ça change

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    Tom Raftery
    in

    According to CNet, it appears that the French have backed down on passing legislation which would have forced Apple to open its DRM if it wanted to continue selling music online in France. The background to this is that all the music which Apple sells online through its iTunes stores has Apple DRM software applied…

  • Interviewed by Matt Cooper of The last Word

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    Tom Raftery
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    I was interviewed this afternoon by Matt Cooper of Today FM’s The Last Word in a follow-up piece to the Irish Blog Awards. Matt raised the recent proposal in France to make it legal to crack DRM – this was reported by Reuters yesterday: France is pushing through a law that would force Apple Computer…