D-R-Aime?

... and other observations
What is DRAime? It's a blog that talks about D, R and ...M! I know what the D stands for, I know what the R stands for, but I have yet to understand what the M is for.
Management? Mismanagement? Misery? Mystery? All bets are on!
(For those who don't know, Aime, in french, is pronounced M and means to like - which gives us DRM)

Friday, September 16, 2005

Maybe life in the US isn't that bad after all....

Wow!

I guess I prefer to the debate about the merits of DRM techiniques than about my right to rip my cd and move that on my mp3 player.

One thing that will be really interesting to watch in the coming years is the different rules that every country adopts, even if they all might be converging to DMCA-like laws. This is particularily interesting for a country like Canada that borders the US.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Is this Digital Limitation Management run amok?

...or is it poor programming?

The ROKR phone (the one with Itunes capabilities) can only allow you to store 100 songs. This limitation is there even if competing products don't have that limitation. I really wondered why. Maybe the lead programmer had this statement in his code:

#DEFINE MAXSONGS 100

And forgot to upgrade that for the final release?

This is really a interesting case. First, it shows how artificial limits fits in the realm of DRM. I think in this case it must be more a business decision that one that pertains to digital rights. On the other hand, with the list of all other limitations that are put in these digital media products everyday, it's sometimes hard to tell.

So regarding this 100 song limitation, my only question is, will it hurt Apple as much as the ATRAC format hurt Sony? I think that customers will accept that one because of the power of Apple, the IPod and iTunes. To be continued...

Monday, September 12, 2005

Do you remember this ruling?

Five years ago, this was written:

Plaintiffs seek a permanent injunction barring defendants from posting
DeCSS on theirweb site and from linking their site to others that make DeCSS available.
And...

Accordingly, plaintiffs are entitled to appropriate injunctive and declaratory relief.


What's interesting is what has happened since then. Not only was it true that the horse is really gone:

Defendants argue that an injunction in this case would be futile because DeCSS already is all over the Internet. They say an injunction would be comparable to locking the barn door after the horse is gone. And the Court has been troubled by that possibility. But the countervailing arguments overcome that concern.

But on top of that the links are still there, and the debate keeps going all over the place, because after 2600.com was Napster, DVDXCOPY, Grokster, etc. Tomorrow it will be Emule and Bittorrent.

At least 2600.com can't link to DeCSS. Good.

Monday, September 05, 2005

This patent stuff is scary...

If patent holders can restrict you from doing some stuff with their products, does it mean that if you hold a patent on something that a user creates, you can limit what that user can do with those?

I'm thinking of something along those lines:
  • A file format, or a portion of a file format gets patented
  • You buy a software that creates such files
Does it mean the software maker can say, for example, that you can't use a third-party tool on the files you create? That would be very scary.

Sunday, September 04, 2005

Well, at least there is the marketplace safety net...

This is a good continuation of previous cases.

What I found interesting was that this could potentially create environmental problems. Even if we believe that Lexmark does a good job at recycling it's cartridges, then it prevents, to some degree, that other people compete to make a better job at it, for example by doing the refilling on your own, which would save transportation costs.

One thing I don't like in the Lexmark argument is that you can always buy the cartridge without the prebate. To me, it sounds like the "if you don't like it here, you can always go somewhere else" argument.

Still, Lexmark doesn't have a monopoly on the markeplace, so let's hope the marketplace weads out practices like those which I think tend to hurt the customer more than help him.

This is also discussed here...