hmm.. how many interesting news lately..
Aaaand finally the challenge is over! Pfew.. we were really losing sleep because of it.. what are reality shows compared to this? nothing.
The Sony's Blu-Ray won [1.1] against the Toshiba's l'HDDVD.
Officially, at least.
Pratically it'd be possible to say that they both lost, being it for a reason or another.
Along with being now subject of a claimed patent infringment [1.2], the Blu-Ray has been defined [1.3] from THX chief Scientist LAURIE FINCHAM and "old technology". (Which is not totally wrong also in my opinion. In fact DVD tooks a lot of time to become a standard, and for the day the Blu-Ray will have replaced the DVD, there will be likely someother kind of storage devices with the same or a bigger capacity but much more handy to manage, like flashcards or maybe something else...)
(?``)
And by the way, the AnyDVD burning software producer, the SLYSOFT, said [2] they managed to get rid of the Blu-Ray DRM, causing in this way the Blu-Ray itself to be added to the list of storage devices with broken/useless copy protection system, along with the early mentioned HDDVD. Well, not all the movies can be copied at this point, but surely a half of the work is done..
(In fact it's always a question of time, sometimes not even too much).
Another proof of how the DRM is actually only a problem for consumers rather than a protection against piracy.
But still they continue imposing it in any way..
(ò_ó)
Luckily not everyone buy this DRM-is-good idea: these days the Israel country replied [3] (.pdf file) to the accuses of the United States about taking not enough care of the copyright protection trouble: Israel government said that they consider these control measures old, often unpleasant to authors and not even proved being efficient.
I'm amazed seeing that there's a government which get such strong position, saying things as they are.. We need more...
(^^)
Anyway, in the meanwhile the amount of authors who decide to free their contents increases (confirming that not anyone likes the DRM approach).
After the NINE INCH NAILS with their new album Ghosts [4.1] [4.2], also Matt Stone and Trey Parker, SOUTH PARK's authors, released online [4.3] [4.4] all the South Park seasons without DRM.
(^__^) <3<3<3
The above mentioned Sony BMG, instead, lets us know that it's considering [5] the chance of a "flat" music distribution system.
Said it this way it seems that they're going to offer so much, but sadly it's going to be a set of locked tunes, so that it'll be possible to use them all, yes, but only paying for them every month. Pratically it requires paying for an undefined amount of time. Otherwise you can stop, but then you can't keep the tunes. It's like to buy the Sony itself on a handy instalment plan: you'd never finish paying for it, and you'd never get it..
Why should we do it?
... (¬_¬?)
But what lets really astonished is that the music industries (better, any editor) are doing all such mess and then what? They commit the same mistake they're complaining about! Also repeatedly, and in such silly ways...
And here comes (again!) the Sony BMG which, after the umbelievable rootkit scandal [6.1] of 2 years ago --that not only caused a load troubles to defend some copyright interests, but did it infringing[6.2] someonelse's copyrights [6.3]-- and some unbelievable recent [6.4] relapses [6.5] (!), right these days it is accused of piracy again [6.6]!
! (Oo)
Anyway, also the movie industries (the MPAA, that some days ago caused TORRENTSPY tracker to close the activity [7.1] to protect its users privacy) aren't immune to such problem [7.2] [7.3].
!!! (>_<)
The good thing is that there's also a part of the internet which is working to promote and defend users rights. Like some events against the copyright extension [8.1] [8.2] [8.3] in Europe, as well as Tim Berners Lee [8.4] who rejects [8.5] tracking of online users activity.
(^^;)
Sadly the battle is hard to manage and the Sarkozy's approach is spreading [9.1] [9.2].
Sarkozy would probably deserve the Big Brother Award for that idea, just like a couple of years ago SonyBMG did [9.3] for the above mentioned reasons (is this sony always along the way? meh!), but it seems that he'll have to be content in giving it his name, because the franch BBA jury reached the conclusion that Mr. Sarkozy's problem must be of genetic source [9.4], so that it's not his fault. Pratically he's not doing it on purpose...
... (·___·)
Anyway copyright is a mess but patents aren't better.
The blogger behind the PATENT TROLL TRACKER blog, who, like name says, take care of tracking Patent Trolling cases (P.T. means using industrial patents like a blackmail, to make money), has been sued [10] right some days ago for defamation...
It was just a question of time I guess...
boh.. (u_u)
y.