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Now what the fuck is that?

Anyways, I wouldn’t have given this any more attention if I didn’t catch somebody saying something like this in that thread:

I loved Sony, I loved my PS2. Then this whole rootkit crap happened. Because of that I am now gonna buy an XBox 360.

Yeh that’ll teach the industry!

It’s a nice demonstration of the stupidity of people in large groups because he probably won’t be the only one thinking that… Microsoft for fuck sakes — a real saint they are.

It’s really funny how, because everybody says DRM is bad and the Sony/BMG thing was pure evil, so they’re buying Microsoft stuff now. It just shows how much people really, really know: just enough to fuck ‘m up….

Sure DRM is bad — but the world needed a Sony/BMG thing to make the public realise what’s happening; but sadly they seem to be missing the point. Microsoft is doing exactly the same — difference is they own the rootkit, err, the stuff that makes up Windows (the stolen frame and the illusion of glass in it). Or their Xbox for that matter.

All of these companies are up to no good — if you really want to make a point; buy neither, because flaming one company while praising the other, while both companies are trying to accomplish the same goals, really makes you look like an idiot.

Oh my fucking god. This is serious because there are plenty of stupid people in this world to believe that crap. Fuck, the critical majority, in each and every issue, is dumber than a horses ass and knows just enough to fuck the whole world up even more.

Ballmer — you are the (fat) fucking thief here — as we all know that property implies theft.

And thieves that steal from the people, of course, rightly deserve to get punished, biblical-style…. And making statements like that, after cutting of his hands, let’s cut out his tongue too.

The sad future is, Microsoft will probably succeed in all this, BECAUSE EVERYBODY IN THIS FUCKING WORLD IS A FUCKING SPINELESS BITCH. Excuse my caps, but sheeeze, this is a fucking disgrace.

Microsoft fanbois probably praising this shit, while they don’t even know half of the Microsoft codebase is probably stolen from public domain anyway.

It seriously upsets me that all those Microsoft fanbois are critising Sony for that DRM debacle, but fuck, how a naive asshole can you be thinking that Microsoft isn’t doing exactly the same with their XBugs (and Vista etc)? Sheesh, those critics wouldn’t even know the DRM mess around them, even if somebody tripped them and they fell face down and drowned in that shit.

What do you think Microsoft is up to with all this shit? The more and more I see the things that the people are allowing to (well rather: ‘against’) themselves, the more I really tend to think that none of you people deserve the freedom you all do dream about. All these idiots probably didn’t even know that the Windows’ TCP/IP stack (you need one for networking) was initially stolen from BSD?

First, they steal all the code, and are now going after the initial sources?

They first targetted Linux, using SCO as a proxy. Now it seems they are throwing their own weight against it. Only because they want nobody to learn IT technology for free. Only to guarantee their frigging monopoly.

The future radiates uglyness and smells of pooh.

As I said earlier this month, Death To The Corporate Mafia and, as things seem to stand, the sooner, the better.

Oh shit — if only this news was a hoax, just like the release of Microsoft’s Firefox browser.

Quote Of The Week, QOTW

Real funny, that.

Safe computing is impossible if the machines are worked by idiots, right? So why even try? The only way that this can really be guaranteed if you take away all liberties people have on their machine — just like, a truely safe environment can only really be accomplished if everybody’s repressed to the bone.

And that can hardly be called ‘good’, right?

Vista, Microsoft, Virus

And they’re doing it with a lot of yee-hah too. Ah, the smell of money can do wonders…

Maybe… Just maybe, they will realise they lost a lot of money by the stance they took, of ‘piracy is bad for the music biz‘ whereas, in reality that piracy could’ve resulted in more album sales….

Music Industry, DRM, P2P

Humour, Zune, iPod

In the long run, they say, the public will get back ‘less innovation’ because of rulings like this.

Is that a threat?

See, it isn’t our fault that they’ve been betting their money on an unfair technology we all don’t want.

It isn’t our fault that these technology companies sucked-on to the media companies in order to pimp their warez.

It sure isn’t our fault that we never liked the technology and try to resist stuff like ‘vendor lock-in’. Well, at least some of us.

It sure as hell isn’t our fault that the technology companies now loose face because the media companies see that the promise they have been made, is slowly fading.

So they now conclude that innovation is threatened. I beg to differ.

As I see it, they now got to think of some other, fair way of protecting ‘intellectual property’: one that is embraced by the public — not one that the public distrusts.

Now that is innovation…

Innovation, DRM, France, Trust

One refers to this column by Bruce posted on Wired:

You own your computer, of course. You bought it. You paid for it. But how much control do you really have over what happens on your machine? Technically you might have bought the hardware and software, but you have less control over what it’s doing behind the scenes.

Using the hacker sense of the term, your computer is “owned” by other people.

A must-read if you own a computer and wonder where it’s all heading with digital content, etcetera.

Another interesting point is made about the Nintendo Wii, which seems to be ‘always on’:

We all know that, but what’s interesting here is that Nintendo is
changing the meaning of the word “off.” We are all conditioned to believe that “off” means off, and therefore safe. But in Nintendo’s case, “off” really means something like “on standby.” If users expect the Nintendo Wii to be truly off, they need to pull the power plug — assuming there isn’t a battery foiling that tactic. There seems to be no way to disconnect the Internet, as the Nintendo Wii is wireless only.

Maybe there is no way to turn the Nintendo Wii off.

There’s a serious security problem here, made worse by a bad user interface. “Off” should mean off.

You can read the Bruce’s latest Crypto-Gram here.

Computers, Schneier, DRM, Entertainment, Security

Oh — we don’t mind if DRM fucks up your computer or does real acts of terrorism. As long as our ‘intellectual property’ is safe.

Bastards make me puke — they really are the new mafia.

Pigopolists, RIAA, MPAA, Rant

Presumable, first they say copying a bought CD is OK.

Now they say it’s infringing use. From the article:

If I understand what the RIAA is saying, “perfectly lawful” means “lawful until we change our mind.” So your ability to continue to make copies of your own CDs on your own iPod is entirely a matter of their sufferance.

In a couple of years — if we don’t stop those crazy RIAA & MPAA and their even sicker DRM motives, you can’t even create your own media without having payed numerous silly licences with even sillier licencing terms.

Believe me, the same will happen to be able to play the damned file. They’re making money at both ends while the end-user, the consumer, yes that’s us all, get sucked dry.

But the warnings are there. The writing’s on the wall.

The multitude seems just too happy to ignore it though.

RIAA, Music, Media

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Integrated Publication and Information Systems Institute have successfully tested a software system, based on the group’s own digital watermarking technology, for tracking pirated audio files in P2P (peer-to-peer) filesharing networks, said Michael Kip, a spokesman for the institute.

Kip referred to the Fraunhofer approach as an alternative to DRM (digital rights management) systems, which he said require special players and are prone to hacking.

While watermarking technology isn’t new per se, this is the first time it has been used in a system to automatically track pirating in P2P networks, according to Kip.

Alternatively I was reading about stegonagraphy the other day — and with steganography also certain parts of images are changes — changes that will not be detected by the naked eye.

But the slight modifications will be gone the moment somebody re-samples the MP3.

I don’t see this becoming a success. Don’t mess around with the music. Keep the shit pure for fuck sakes.

With DRM the problem is — the moment your computer breaks, you cannot play your media anymore because they are all locked to your computer.

With watermarking, the moment somebody steals your files, and puts your files on the Internet — you will suffer the consequences.

So from a privacy point of view, this ain’t a good idea either. Record companies should just make good music that’s worth going to the artists’ concert for. It’s as simple as that.

Music, DRM, Watermarking, Tracing

But on Monday the MPAA admitted it had made a copy of the film but claimed, because their staff were the subject of the film, they were not breaking copyright law. An MPAA spokeswoman said: “We made a copy of Kirby’s movie because it had implications for our employees. We were concerned about the raters and their families,” the LA Times reported.

OK?! The Mafia Picture Association of America openly admit they illegally copied a DVD? That’s against the law. That’s illegal. They should be fined.

They have proven once and for all they don’t even honour those laws they’re suing old ladies and 8 year old children for… Interesting.

So basically, they want us to be more honest than they are themselves? With associations like these you don’t need criminal organisations!
 
MPAA, Fraud, Piracy

Musical instrument shops must pay an annual royalty to cover shoppers who perform a recognisable riff before they buy, thereby making a “public performance”.

Music industry, DRM

Personally, I don’t feel Sony is 100% responsible for what has occured, so I can’t really hold a grudge against them.

And in reality, it is the western, B.M.G., part of the company that did this. For what it’s worth: I do not have grudge against them like soo many others seem to have, suddenly. (But it’s true that Sony just never should’ve ventured into this nasty music industry in the first place.)

Anyways.. Don’t boycott Sony, but boycott the Bertelsmann Music Group.

Or even better, boycott the music industry as a whole, and send out the message that they should stop investing all that money into copy protection schemes which all just don’t work.

Let us remind them, that, in order to make people pay for their goods, their goods must be worth paying.

I’m not jumping on the ‘Boycott Sony‘ band-wagon — the PS3 is way to important to me.

Update 2005-11-23: This suddenly hit me on the road to work this morning: when Microsoft’s Windows 95 was sending your personal information, where was the boycott then? I don’t remember any, whilst that’s surely just as serious and bad a practice.

RIAA president Cary Sherman has backed Sony’s use of spyware rootkits and claims that other companies do it all the time. Sherman said that music corporations have the same right to protection as movie studios, video game makers, or software companies.

OK I think this guy just officially burried DRM. I don’t think any would-be-customer would be OK with the fact that these capitalist, monopolist pigs rather infect your computer than to actually produce music worth buying…

If I was the RIAA or MPAA I would’ve shut the fuck up. Making these kind of stupid remarks will cause people to see these pigs’s true faces.

So all-in-all a well meant `Thumbs Up‘ from me to Cary Sherman.

I hope enough consumers will read his stupid remarks, and realize they shouldn’t buy his stuff!

What makes the Sony BMG incident even more unfortunate is that the DRM technology can be defeated easily. Gartner has identified one simple technique: The user simply applies a fingernail-sized piece of opaque tape to the outer edge of the disc, rendering session 2 — which contains the self-loading DRM software — unreadable. The PC then treats the CD as an ordinary single-session music CD, and the commonly used CD “rip” programs continue to work as usual. (Note: Gartner does not recommend or endorse this technique.) Moreover, even without the tape, common CD-copying programs readily duplicate the copy-protected disc in its entirety.

LOL — now that doesn’t really come as a surprise, now does it?

To make an even bolder statement:

Any DRM solution shall fail.

Think about it for a second: how can you securily store something in a bottle that only the recipient may read, but of which he may not know the contents?

That’s quite a paradox now isn’t it? It’s just like trying to protect the content (i.e. prevent the visitor from viewing the source HTML code) in a browser.
- You could use Javascript protection, but we’ll just disable Javascript.
- You could use Shockwave applications, but we’ll just make a screenshot & use OCR to get it in a text-file.

No matter what mechanism you can think of, a method for bypassing it is only a few thoughts away…. This old UserFriendly nicely illustrates what I mean there:

Some sites have been set-up, and also Amazon has started sending out emails to customers who have bought this CD, telling them it can be replaced if they return it.

The sad thing is — chances are these companies will attempt to force DRM upon us in the future, again and again and again until they finally succeed.

Today, somebody discovered it also contains parts FFmpeg / VLC code! To top it all of, it also contains code by Joh Johansen (DVD Jon, remember?) which bypasses Apple DRM.

It violates the DMCA!

This is going to be interesting… US-CERT now also advises not to install software from audio-CDs.

Will the end justify the means, or are things turning ’round?

I thought the link’s quite amusing. In my opinion, boycotting Sony’s other products doesn’t seem like a solution for this; I don’t thing this might cause Sony to actually apologize for what happened. Sadly, the music business is a hard, almost criminal, industry. I’d still buy a PS3 though.

Yesterday, I also discovered this write-up at EFF.org focussing on the legal matters in the EULA (End-User License Agreement). An interesting read, indeed….

Update 2005-11-18: Fixed link to soryelectronics.com.

The software was widely criticised because it used virus-like techniques to stop illegal copies being made.

First of all; the ‘virus-like techniques’ don’t work because the ‘protection-mechanism’ can be used against itself. As it hides processes starting with $sys$, a simple rename of your favorite ripping-executable would enable you to read the protected disks like before.

They obviously didn’t think it through enough, and from a programmers point of view it seems like First4Internet wanted a quick buck, and provided Sony with a quick & dirty solution.

I bet someone’s going to get fired over this.

Additionally, I heard the wrong information on the news today: it was being portrayed as a ‘copyright protection mechanism that prevented copies being made’. I always hate it when stuff pops up in main-stream media like that, there was absolutely no mention of the virus-like features.