David Pogue (NY Times) has written a blog entry about his experience as an author selling an ebook with no DRM... and it wasn't the end of the world, or even his career as an author. With the nook and a possible Apple tablet coming to contend with the Kindle …

The folks at Revision3 have a detailed article about a Denial of Service (DoS) attack which was perpetrated upon them over Memorial Day weekend 2008. The kicker is that the attack was either intentional or negligent misconfiguration on behalf of a RIAA "watchdog" company named MediaDefender. It's unclear whether appropriate …

It's not surprising to read an article that describes the RIAA as having done something stupid, but here's an op ed piece from the New York Times by an independent record seller who directly blames them for the demise of that which the RIAA was trying to save: albums, CDs …

I guess that digital radio you're listening to via your laptop is just too much for the RIAA, so they have gone after the broadcast of music online. According to an article from BetaNews, internet radio stations will pay an average of $8.91 per listener in 2006 and move …

Just for fun, here's the article that I wrote on March 6th 2003 that spawned the idea for my recently issued patent. I still think it's a frightening idea, but at least now I might have some control over whether it happens. While writing a summary story on a Wired …

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has released version 4 of their report Unintended Consequences: Seven Years under the DMCA, an account of the effects of the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) after we've had a chance to see what happens. Not many surprises in it, but those unfamiliar may find …

Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux says that he won't switch the Linux kernel to GPL 3 because of the anti-DRM provisions in the license. An article from CNet covers a posting to the Linux kernel mailing list that details his concerns.

In an important ruling, a Nevada court found that Google's cache of the data of web sites does not violate copyright law and is covered by the "safe harbor" provisions of the DMCA and other laws. Comments from the EFF are available in an online article, as is the ruling …

In a well-written article from Ars Technica, Hannibal chases down an item that appears in the EFF's Deeplinks section. The EFF article describes an attempt by the RIAA and MPAA to restrict future electronics to supporting only "customary historic use" of content, and they describe how they want it implemented …

Intel and Microsoft have started to quietly insert pieces of Microsoft's new Digital Rights Management (DRM) into Intel's latest hardware. According to an article from Digit, Intel's Pentium D (dual core chip) and 945g chipset include support for the DRM technology, although neither Microsoft nor Intel is disclosing how much …

Karl has another well thought piece on cavebear about copyright.This time he advocates skipping 3 bad movies that you would otherwise go see and instead going to live shows. A fine idea, I think!

Have you ever reinstalled your laptop or desktop machine because Windows just isn't happy with the world and you think it would be better to get a fresh start? Well, if you need to do that and don't want to wait in a hold-queue forever, you probably should take care …

As reported in this article from ARS Technica, the DMCA lawsuit by Lexmark against a producer of chips to work-around Lexmark's toner reuse hack is not progressing well. It may be the first sign of a serious crack in the much-vaunted DMCA protections for everything from software to toner.

In a passionate and detailed article, Popular Science takes the movie industry and the MPAA to task over their strangle-hold on content on DVDs. The article describes the faustian bargain that we all made with the movie industry when we accepted their copy protection scheme, since broken many times and …

An article from the Voice of America news service mentions the passage (by the US Senate) and the signature (by President Bush) of the United States-Australia Free Trade Agreement. It also mentions that the Australian Senate isn't keen on it in its current form but leaves out information reported by …

According to an article from CNet, Marybeth Peters, the Registrar of Copyrights, is set to endorse the INDUCE act (written about here in a previous article). In the history of bad technology legislation, this act is set to be rivaled only by the DMCA in terms of its chilling effect …

EFF representative Cory Doctorow gave a talk to Microsoft about DRM (Digital Rights Management) on June 17th, 2004. An electronic transcript is available. Not surprisingly, it details why DRM is bad and will lead to no good in technological, social, and business terms. One of the most interesting passages was …

In a well-watched privacy case, the RIAA has been handed a defeat in its contest with Verzion over releasing personal information about subscribers. According to an article from USA Today, the US District Court of Appeals overturned the ruling and sided with Verizon (and the customers). This now throws into …

According to an article from CNet, the Canadian courts have determined that downloading files from P2P services is legal, although uploading them is not (if you don't own the copyright). This continues the existing tradition of favoring individual use over copyright holders rights in Canada. The additional twist this time …

According to a story on CNet, the Library of Congress has issued the new exemptions to the DMCA and they are minimal. The exemptions allow for the removal of copy protection systems in four specific cases: obsolete software that requires security dongles, e-books that don't provide for handicapped access (specifically …