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A Burr in the Saddle, . . Again

When are Republicans going to get that you can’t just use a rock and roll song without at minimum earning the commentary of the original rocker? John McCain had John Mellencamp. Now the Minority Whip, Eric Cantor has Aerosmith up in arms over his use of Back in the Saddle.

And am I wrong? It seems to me that if anyone would be on the side of DRM and the “rights” of corporations, it should be the Republicans. How could you be so stupid as to not have gotten the performance rights before releasing a video to YouTube?

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Music on microSD? Really?

San Disk is announcing this week that they’ve actually talked record execs into selling high-quality, DRM free music on 1Gb microSD cards.  Can you believe it?  This is amazing to me on a number of levels, not the least of which is the fact that flash media is so cheap that it has become a suitable media for delivering music to customers.

But DRM-free and already on a microSD card?  Could this finally be the recording industry coming to grips with reality?  Naw, gotta be a misprint. . .

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Digital Media and Digital Rights Management

Those of you who regularly stop back to this blog have no doubt noticed that a fair amount of the news updates are concerned with “DRM,” but many of you might not know what that means. You’ve seen Warner Brothers, Sony, Apple and iPod, along with lots of other big media names tied to those articles. I figured this morning would be a good opportunity to tackle some of the basic concepts surrounding “DRM,” and why I think they are important issues for progressives to be out in front of.

DRM means Digital Rights Management, but more importantly, it represents attempts by media conglomerates to use technological means to prevent users from copying content they’ve produced. Originally, it meant preventing CDs and DVDs from being copied, but with the digital age n full swing with MP3 players and digital downloads, it has meant a variety of other things in a variety of different venues all centered around the media industry’s “right” to make as much money as possible.

Concepts in this arena get messy quick, so I’m going to keep this post relatively short and leashed to only one relatively narrow topic: what is it about digital media that has so complicated copyright law?