If ever a technology was introduced prematurely, it was digital rights management (DRM). From the DVD Content Scramble System (CSS) to the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) in HD DVD and Blu-ray systems, millions of dollars have been invested in failed attempts to prevent piracy of digital content.
Security is difficult to do right. CSS failed because virtually every element of the system was poorly designed. It used weak 40-bit encryption and was vulnerable to break-once, break-everywhere attacks. CSS continues to be used because it's better than ... Read more
CNET user jasonbentley replied to my blog post yesterday (here) with a thought-provoking comment:
It is egregiously disingenuous to name Flickr and then refuse to name Scribd, which you've annointed a "pirate site," completely missing the fact that Flickr is *full* of copyrighted content (and a lot of content that's not).
Update, 3 September: I have learned that Jason Bentley is Director of Community Development at Scribd. The American Heritage Dictionary defines "disingenuous" as "Not straightforward or candid; insincere or calculating." I'd say that definition applies to this kind of astroturfing. So someone from Scribd is seeking to deflect attention away from the massive piracy going on at his company by throwing mud at Flickr. Interesting. But anyway, Bentley's points deserve to be addressed.
I suppose I was making a point by declining ... Read more
There's a website out there that presents itself as the textual equivalent of Flickr-- that is, users can upload any kind of text document, and the site provides public access to all these documents.
But unlike Flickr, it's pretty obvious that the primary attraction of this site in practical terms is that it's full of copyrighted documents, and the operators apparently don't much care. Much of the content there isn't pirated, but it's still a pirate site as far as I'm concerned, and so ... Read more
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