Copies of this article should be circulated to those who think that is is okay to keep data in proprietary formats, support DRM or think license servers are 'cool'.
(http://lwn.net/Articles/246921/) ===== Ruminations on software freedom By Jake Edge August 29, 2007 The failure of Microsoft's anti-piracy servers over the weekend (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070827-wga-failure-highlights-major-flaw-in-microsofts-anti-piracy-strategy.html) would seem an easy entree to some Redmond-bashing, but there are far more important issues to consider. It is sometimes easy to forget about the "freedom" in free software, but that is exactly what protects the users of Linux and other free systems from this kind of misfeature. Using proprietary, closed source software with a decidedly one-sided license agreement is not wrong, per se, but should be considered carefully – not just entered into blindly as is often the case. [...] Microsoft is not alone in the practice of software and hardware validation, many copy protection and license key schemes depend on some kind of matching between the key and the hardware it is licensed for. Other vendors snoop on their users, in the interests of cheating prevention in games for example, and report back to central servers. Skype was recently found to root around in Firefox profiles for unknown (possibly benign) reasons (http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=95261). It comes down to a question of who controls the system, both hardware and software, that one has purchased. The control issue comes in other forms as well. Proprietary data formats are one of the current battlefields. It is rather amazing that folks will pay lots of money to lock up their data in a format that they will probably be unable to read in ten years time; unless they periodically convert it to use the latest format. So-called Digital Rights Management (DRM) is yet another control scheme that imposes restrictions, determined by the vendor, on books, videos, music, and the like. These restrictions are not arbitrary, the sellers try to optimize their income by imposing constraints that won't chase away the majority of their customers. [...] It will be very interesting to watch how the "iPod generation" reacts when the iPod is no longer the music player of choice. All of the music that they "bought" from iTunes will not play elsewhere. Apple will, in all likelihood, make it as hard as possible to migrate to another player, even if their market dominance in digital music players has passed. Users will be left with no choice but to "buy" the music again, which is great for the record companies, but not so much for the users. Google Video users ran into the same problem recently (http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8R675BO0.htm), their DRM-infected videos were to stop playing after 15 August. After initially mishandling the revocation, along with a poorly received refund plan, Google has since relented, offering a full refund and extending the life of the videos until February 2008. With luck, users who have been bitten by these schemes will demand DRM-free versions when they make their second purchase. [...] ===== -- Soh Kam Yung my Google Reader Shared links: (http://www.google.com/reader/shared/16851815156817689753) my delicious links: (http://del.icio.us/SohKamYung) my simpy links: (http://www.simpy.com/user/kysoh/links) _______________________________________________ Slugnet mailing list [email protected] http://www.lugs.org.sg/mailman/listinfo/slugnet
