Don't Make Me Steal - a Digital Media Consumption Manifesto.
posted by Artw on Feb 4, 2011 - 107 comments

"[C]omputer design is being dictated not by electronic design rules, physical layout requirements, and thermal issues, but by the wishes of the content industry." By deliberately breaking audio and video functionality, opening up new avenues for debilitating malware, and reversing performance gains in desktop PCs and third-party components, Peter Gutmann argues "the Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history."
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Dec 23, 2006 - 132 comments

Not only is Starforce an evil driver-based copy-protection system that will spontaneously reboot your machine without warning if it thinks its being circumvented, not only is it on surprisingly many PC software products including a few you just might own, not only does it not remove itself when the game that installed it is uninstalled, but now they're claiming that the complaints about their software ultimately come from the Russian Mafia, and are asking authorities in the U.S. and Russia about looking into them.... (Previous Starforce idiocy on MeFi.)
posted by JHarris on Mar 21, 2006 - 62 comments

Sony to introduce new CD format. No, it's not DVD-Music. It's a new double-capacity CD format that Sony says "will be able to prevent illegal copying." I'm assuming the new format will require all-new hardware to read and to write. So my question is, what's the point? Won't another music format just increase consumer confusion and make them more reluctant to buy? Why come out with a 1.3GB format just as recordable DVDs, with much larger capacities, are becoming practical? Do they really expect people to buy all new hardware to support what is obviously a dead-end format?
posted by daveadams on Jul 5, 2000 - 12 comments