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New marketing strategy: Sue Your Potential CustomersJust because the DMCA is a bad law
doesn't mean anyone has to make it worse
Talk about literally manufacturing a
problem.
A California company that makes technology designed to prevent ripping of digital audio streams has accused Apple, Microsoft, RealNetworks and Adobe Systems of violating federal copyright law by "actively avoiding" use of its products. Media Rights Technologies and its digital radio subsidiary BlueBeat.com said in a press release Thursday that it had issued cease and desist letters to the high-tech titans. It argues that the companies have manufactured billions of copies of Windows Vista, Adobe Flash Player, Real Player and Apple's iTunes and iPod "without regard for the DMCA or the rights of American intellectual property owners." DMCA refers to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a controversial 1998 law that generally makes it illegal to circumvent technological protection measures that control access to copyrighted works. The law says circumvent means "to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner." Talk about asinine. Windows Vista has so much copy protection that it deliberately cripples it's multimedia capabilities, no matter what hardware you may have installed. Apple's OS X isn't nearly as intrusive, but it is definitely there. Just try using Apple's software to grab a DVD movie screenshot to use as a desktop background (wallpaper to you Windows folks). The principle complaint in the EU against Apple is that Apple won't open up FairPlay (it's proprietary DRM standard) to other vendors. Speaking as a free market advocate, I can tell you that the fastest known way to develop any product is to have multiple choices. Each of the named companies has it's own DRM scheme, some better, some worse. It's the competition that makes the survivors better and cheaper over time. 
Posted: Sat
- May 12, 2007 at 04:26 PM
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 Pagan Vigil
Pagan philosopher, libertarian, and part-time trouble maker, NeoWayland watches for threats to individual freedom or personal responsiblity. There's more to life than just black and white, using only extremes just increases the problems.  My Thinking Blogger Nominees
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