Good talk by Larry Lessig that points out why I have such a hard time choosing a political party.

First up, Wal-Mart has decided to turn off its DRM servers and screw its customers who bought from them. Just like Microsoft did and Yahoo did before them. Tell us again about how DRM is the safe way to buy. Next up is the great hobby of reenacting. Rule one, only reenact with people who [...]

So lets say you are a principaled music fan, you only buy legal music online and the whole Digital Rights Management thing never really bothered you. You bought a ton of music from Microsoft, they are the biggest guys in town so you know you are risk free right? Right. Microsoft is about to turn [...]

Buying music online used to be easy. Either you bought from Itunes, who had the biggest catalog or EMusic who were the only major selling mp3s. The frontier is changing now and I thought I would put up some thoughts and tips for shopping online for music. For the purposes of this I will be [...]

I have been really pleased with Amazon’s music download sales, they give you very high quality MP3 files with no restrictions on what you can do with the files built into the files. Their selection is good, they have just added Warner Brothers to the line up and while they don’t have all the small [...]

There has been another copyright hubbub this week with a photographer, Lane Hartwell, had one or her photos appear in a parody video that got to be popular. She got mad, asked them to remove it, when they were flip with her she got a lawyer and filed a “notice and takedown” under the DMCA [...]

I say lock them up and throw away the bloody key. Are there no poor houses? Wha.. oh, this is one, well that is no excuse. Edit: It gets worse, now you are supposed to hide from Carolers as you cower in fear in your own home.

I am passionate about public domain. It is going away. It is being eroded by our bought out Congress who are constantly giving away extensions of copyright and trademark terms without getting anything for the public back in return. They are betraying us in favor those who give them campaign contributions, understandable, but ultimately unacceptable [...]

I don’t hate copyrights but it is my belief that they are they are being abused beyond all recognition of what copyright was originally supposed to be about. Here is a good editorial from the Guardian on the topic.

Read this morning that the Smithsonian is selling off the nation’s attic to Showtime. This is madness. It is already hard enough to make documentaries thanks to the insane restrictions on use of copyrighted works, now our the rights to film our heritage is being sold off, next up the big National Archives/HBO deal. I [...]