Tag: DRM

Categories
work

Copy Protection Rant

I’m doing some work for a client this morning. I’m updating his portfolio for his acting career and ironically, trying to download the tv show which he plays in is proving to be more difficult than I imagined. The CBC is streaming the show in SWF format, however, they’ve made it nearly impossible (as far as I can tell) to save it locally.

After spending nearly a half hour trying to work it out, I finally decided to check my favourite bit torrent site. The show in question will be downloaded in about 30 minutes—so much for trying to do things the CBC’s way.

Categories
copyright

Say NO! to the Canadian DMCA

The Canadian government is about to bring down Canada’s version of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and it promises to be the worst copyright law in the developed world. It will contain an anti-circumvention clause that prohibits breaking the locks off your music and movies in order to move them to new devices or watch them after the company that made them goes out of business and it will follow the US’s disastrous lead with the DMCA in that there will be no exceptions to the ban on circumvention, not even for parody, fair dealing, time shifting, or other legal uses.

Basically, in the US, it is illegal to even pick the locks of anything that is keeping you from accessing the content, EVEN IF YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO DO SO.

In plain English? You can’t rip songs off YOUR CDs to play on YOUR iPod. The company who runs the DRM system goes out of business? Too bad. Want to unlock your cell phone to run on another network? Nope. You want to copy an eBook that is in the public domain? No way. You want to use a clip from a documentary DVD in your own commentary? Fat chance. You want to backup anything copyrighted that you bought? Think again.
The list goes on and on.