Cory Doctorow (of BoingBoing fame) wrote an excellent article for the SF Guardian today about the impossibility of true DRM. For the uninitiated, DRM stands for "Digital Rights Management," and is the five-dollar term the corporations use for copy protection on movies, games, and music. It's been failing miserably since around the advent of Napster way back in the day, but its failure is picking up steam. Cory's article is an excellent introduction (written for the lay person) about why true DRM is as much a pipe dream as faster than light travel--maybe even more so. I suggest everyone read it; it's quite short, and will let you know what the hell all the geeks are so upset about.
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He did an excellent talk along the same lines in one of the Authors@Google series. The talk is about 35 minutes plus Q&A, and is excellent. He criticizes Google on their DRM complicity to their faces, and earned my immediate respect for doing so.
Plus, he also drew lots of rather uncomfortable parallels between the US and the USSR. Good stuff.
Guardian is published in Manchester, btw.
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