The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations.

The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices.

Content providers have leverage against content distributors, because distributors can't legally distribute copyrighted content without the permission of the content's creators. But if that was the only leverage content producers had, what would happen is that users would obtain their content from those content distributors, and then use third-party content playback systems to read it, letting them do so in whatever manner they wanted.

In all three cases, nobody has been stopped from violating a copyright. All three movies are probably available on file sharing sites. The only people who are stopped from doing anything are the player providers -- they are forced to provide a user experience that, rather than being optimised for the users, puts potential future revenues first (forcing people to play ads, keeping the door open to charging more for more features later, building artificial obsolescence into content so that if you change ecosystem, you have to purchase the content again).

Although WCIT is over, the ITU journey continues, and a fascinating post by Anthony Rutkowski on the CircleID Web site gives us a glimpse of where exactly it's heading -- and it doesn't look good. The ITU's "Internet/cloud" Study Group 13 is convening soon, and as Rutkowski points out, the provenance of the contributions submitted to this meeting reflect what is happening to the organization: 70% of them are from China or Korea.

Almost everyone has fled the organization except for a few established participants from China and Korea and their partners. Pretty much all of industry together with the G55 nations [who refused to sign the WCIT treaty] have left.

Alternatively, the G89 nations who did sign the WCIT treaty may decide it is more important for their sections of the Internet to be firmly under their control than for there to be a single, unified set of Internet standards for the world. The schism would be formalized, with a more open G55 Internet linking up as best it could with the more closed G89 network. That would be a tragedy for humanity, but on the basis of the WCIT conference and the developments since then, it's certainly not something that can be ruled out.

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One way to think about the War for the Internet is to cast it as a polar conflict: Order versus Disorder, Control versus Chaos. The forces of Order want to superimpose existing, pre-digital power structures and their associated notions of privacy, intellectual property, security, and sovereignty onto the Internet. The forces of Disorder want to abandon those rickety old structures and let the will of the crowd create a new global culture, maybe even new kinds of virtual "countries." At their most extreme, the forces of Disorder want an Internet with no rules at all.

A conflict with two sides is a picture we're used to--and although in this case it's simplistic, it's a way to get a handle on what the stakes are. But the story of the War for the Internet, as it's usually told, leaves out the characters who have the best chance to resolve the conflict in a reasonable way. Think of these people as the forces of Organized Chaos. They are more farsighted than the forces of Order and Disorder. They tend to know more about the Internet as both a technical and social artifact. And they are pragmatists. They are like a Resistance group that hopes to influence the battle and to shape a fitful peace. The Resistance includes people such as Vint Cerf, who helped design the Internet in the first place; Jeff Moss, a hacker of immense powers who has been trying to get Order and Disorder to talk to each other; Joshua Corman, a cyber-security analyst who spends his off-hours keeping tabs on the activities of hackers operating under the name of Anonymous; and Dan Kaminsky, one of the world's top experts on the Internet's central feature, the Domain Name System.

"According to the iTunes Store Terms of Sale, all purchases made on the iTunes Store are ineligible for refund. This policy matches Apple's refund policies and provides protection for copyrighted materials."

Last October the game went free again, and stayed that way for four months. Then the sting came along. About a week ago (at time of writing), the game received an "update", which came with just four words of description - "Now Touch Racing Free!" As the game was already free, users could have been forgiven for thinking this wasn't much of a change. But in fact, the app thousands of them had paid up to £5 for had effectively just been stolen.

Two of the game's three racing modes were now locked away behind IAP paywalls, and the entire game was disfigured with ruinous in-game advertising, which required yet another payment to remove.

"Hi!

Thanks for contacting us.

I'm really sorry about that. I knew that this could happen. The team had no option but to do that.

We're not trying to make money from people who have already bought the game like you did. It is not an excuse, but only 4% of the 2MM downloads have been paid ones. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't provide with any methods to know when an user has paid or not for an app. We just want to monetize the game from that 96% who are enjoying the game for free. Our goal is to monetize them via advertisement. We understand that this is annoying for the players that have paid for it.

Yes, maybe we could have released a LITE version, but if we release a new free version, we couldn't monetize near 2 MM free downloads we already have. And why we have 96% free downloads? A very bad old decision.. We've begun a new phase at Bravo Games and we definitely need some revenues from those downloads.

At the moment all our efforts are focused in new projects. When we finish those projects, we'll evaluate the possibility of adding new content to previous games like Touch Racing Nitro.

I regret to hear that you never buy another of our apps."

If 96% of those were free downloads, that means that a whopping 80,000 people who paid money for Touch Racing have just been screwed. If we assume an arbitrary but reasonable average price of £1.19 (the second-lowest App Store price tier at the time most of the sales were made, though the app has cost at least twice that much for most of its life), that's just short of £100,000 that Bravo have extracted from consumers for what is in effect a "Lite" demo version of the game.

Imagine if the rest of the world worked this way. Imagine you went to Tesco and bought three boxes of Corn Flakes on a "three-for-two" offer, only for a Tesco employee to turn up at your house one day a month later and confiscate not only the "free" box but also the second one that you'd actually paid for. There'd be riots, or at the very least a long court backlog of assault cases and battered workers. Yet apparently, for videogames it's the dynamic economic model of the future.

WoSland is a pretty wily consumer, and currently has eight apps sitting in its iPhone's "update" queue which are never going to get those updates, because the "update" in question is in fact a downgrade, removing functionality and/or adding ads. We've deleted many others altogether for the same reason.

I think once you publish something, you lose control of it. At worst, you inspire mockery and parody. At best, you become material for future work, because what you’ve made is successful, interesting, or relevant. Usually, it is both.

All work produces spill-over repercussions that usually go against the will of the work’s creator. The creator wishes to retain authorship and control the work, while those in the culture wish to use, transform, and remix it. If the work is truly successful, it will defy authorship and turn into a shared experience for everyone. Those works are the hardest to control, because they diffuse, and spread wide by permeating into the air. The become a shorthand for those who make or enjoy similar work, becoming a shared vocabulary.

The situation requires things from both those who create the work, and those who wish to use it.

For the initial creator, they must resign most control upon publication, especially on the internet. Their work will be used to say and do things they don’t intend. Ideas, in truth, go further when others carry them, and this usually means they will go in directions the original author did not intend or imagine. For instance, I’ve had a quote of mine (“People ignore design that ignores people.”) taken out of context and used to justify two completely contradictory design methods. So it goes.

For those that use the things made by others, they should credit where possible, and have their work be transformative in some way. They can carry the ideas of others, but they must to take it further or a new direction. Then, they are obliged share alike. To not do both is to go against the goodwill initiated by the work’s creator.

And for both, we should recognize that all creative processes use materials from those who came before us, and respect the meaningful influence of others. We’re part of a long line of people who make things. It is a privilege to get to use the work of others in our own.

Unfortunately, this is why investing in Spotify may not be wise and why firms like Andreessen-Horowitz may have passed. It’s a great service with a big lead on other music streamers. But as it scales and gains traction, the record labels will increase their tax. There’s no way Spotify will pay the same fees if it hits 15 million subscribers as it does now. That will make it harder for Spotify to return the multiple most investors want any time soon.

In most industries, if a partner charges you too high a licensing fee you can go to one of their competitors. That’s not how it works in music. You can’t get a cheaper equivalent to Michael Jackson or Lady Gaga like you could for enterprise software. If you want “Thriller” you have to pay whatever the labels ask. And even if it does, Spotify isn’t getting exclusive access to that content.

Though the specifics of the deals between record labels and music streaming services are secret, many details have been leaked over time, and it's long been known that they are onerous and one-sided. Last year, Michael Robertson of MP3tunes explained how the general structure of the deals make growth and innovation extremely difficult, while collusion among the labels eliminates any last shred of competition and ensures that a service like Spotify can never negotiate better terms. Investors know that music startups essentially live or die at the behest of the legacy industry, and investors are smart—they aren't about to bet millions on record labels making good decisions.

Economically speaking, none of this is surprising, because copyright is a monopoly and this is what monopolies do. They distort the free market and allow the monopolists to control the competition. Adding insult to injury, recording industry defenders like to tout streaming services as examples of how the industry embraces innovation, and RIAA CEO Cary Sherman recently said he was surprised that Spotify wasn't generating more revenue for the labels. To anyone who understands how difficult the labels have made life for these startups, claims like these don't pass the laugh test—and Spotify's difficulty securing funding is just more evidence of this fact. Its numbers would make it a hot investment property if it operated in any space other than music, but because it is shackled to a dying industry with a long history of technophobia, investors take their money elsewhere. Who can blame them?

“Easy access to information online is a huge safety issue,” said Von Palmer, the real estate board’s chief privacy officer. “There is a real possibility of break-ins and assaults; you only have to read the headlines to imagine what might happen. You hear stories about realtors getting attacked and killed. Can you imagine if we put that information out there about consumers? You can only imagine the headlines.”

A spokesman for the Toronto Police Service said he wasn’t aware violence against real estate agents was a problem in the city.

Cable companies want to increase the cable bills of millions of Americans and to virtually eliminate competition from third party devices like Boxee. We want you to know because it will affect millions of people, non-Boxee and Boxee users alike, and we need your help to fight it.

For the past several months, Boxee has been forced into a legislative battle with cable companies. Right now, anyone can get basic tier cable. Attach your TV, computer, or Boxee Live TV tuner and everything just works. Cable companies want the federal government to end that, and to require every user to have ALL of their TVs attached to cable boxes. We’re concerned many users who have Live TV tuners and rely on basic cable will be hurt by this, but we’re also focused on how the issue goes far beyond Boxee.

Here are the effects of the rule:

1. It could more than DOUBLE the cost for the typical new basic cable subscriber.

2. If you have a TV that’s hooked up to cable without a box, you MUST rent a set top box for that TV.

3. If your computer’s TV tuner is connected to your cable connection without a box, it will no longer work unless it uses a CableCARD.

4. If you bought a DVR that does not include a CableCARD it will no longer work without an antenna. If you don’t get signal with the antenna, your DVR is now worthless.

...…long-held stance on how third-party websites access proprietary AAdvantage member details… Because travelers’ AAdvantage account numbers and passwords can be used to claim AAdvantage mileage awards out of their accounts and access personal details, American will always protect this information.

We simply cannot permit websites that have not satisfied our security requirements the access needed to track AAdvantage balances or any other function that is otherwise secured behind AA.com login credentials.

The MPAA's O'Leary concedes that the industry was out-manned and outgunned in cyberspace. He says the MPAA "is [undergoing] a process of education, a process of getting a much, much greater presence in the online environment. This was a fight on a platform we're not at this point comfortable with, and we were going up against an opponent that controls that platform."

As a rule, we're always supposed to applaud the collapse of the record industry. We are supposed to feel good about the democratization of music and the limitless palette upon which artists can now operate. But that collapse is why Lulu exists. If we still lived in the radio prison of 1992, do you think Metallica would purposefully release an album that no one wants? No way. Cliff Burnstein from Q Prime Management would listen to their various ideas, stroke his white beard, and deliver the following 45-second pep talk: "OK, great. Love these concepts. Your allusion to Basquiat's middle period was very apt, Lars. Incisive! But here's our situation. If you guys spend two months writing superfast Diamond Head songs about nuclear winter and shape-shifting, we can earn $752 million in 18 months, plus merchandizing. That's option A. The alternative is that you can make a ponderous, quasi-ironic art record about 'the lexicon of hate' that will outrage the Village Voice and mildly impress Laurie Anderson. Your call." Ten minutes later, Bob Rock would be parking his Lexus at the studio...

But if the fundamental goal of Metallica is to make good music, it seems like trying to get rich while doing so dramatically improves their creative process. The constraints of late capitalism really work for them; they're extraordinarily adept at making electrifying heavy rock that's designed to generate revenue. The reason Lulu is so terrible is because the people making this music clearly don't care if anyone else enjoys it. Now, here again - if viewed in a vacuum - that sentiment is admirable and important. But we don't live in a vacuum. We live on Earth. And that means we have to accept the real-life consequences of a culture in which recorded music no longer has monetary value, and one of those consequences is Lulu.

Ever since Vietnam, the U.S. government has shown an odd propensity for dragging us into unpopular (and unwinnable) wars. Between the protracted Iraq "War" (nearly a decade at this point), our involvement in Afghanistan and our intervention in Libya , Americans are finding that the old concept of "war" doesn't really fit what's going on here.

Back on the home front, various unwinnable wars continue to suck down tax dollars and erode civil rights. The War on Drugs. The War on Terror. The political system is no longer interested in mere skirmishes or "police actions." Everything is a capital-W "War."

A multitude of problems arise from couching these situations in catastrophic and adversarial terms. Declaring "war" on drugs has brought the battle to the home front and turned our law enforcement into an ad hoc military force. The slightest of violations is met with excessive force. There are dozens of stories of people whose houses have been invaded by SWAT teams armed with automatic weapons. Uninvolved children have been thrust into violent situations by the perceived wrongdoing of their parents. When a person possessing a couple of ounces of marijuana is treated like a Colombian drug lord, the system is being abused.

Using the word "war" automatically defines your opponent as violent, no matter how untrue that designation is. Declaring the nation to be in the midst of a "cyberwar" allows law enforcement and government security agencies to escalate their response to perceived threats. Every reaction becomes an overreaction. No matter what your opinion of Anonymous and like-minded hackers might be, it's pretty safe to say that most of us do not consider them to be a violent threat.

All previous indications point to this being handled just as badly as any previous "war." The point will come when people are overrun in their own homes by armed tactical units in response to actions like DDoS attacks which, as Reason points out, are usually "undirected protests" with "no tactical objective." Truly innocent citizens will be swept up in this as well, considering the number of computers out there that have been "zombified" and pressed into service as part of a botnet. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has already demonstrated that it needs nothing more than an IP address to mobilize.

In times of war, corners are cut and rights are treated as privileges. When the enemy is invisible and the list of possible suspects grows exponentially with each broadening of the definition of "hacking," the "war" becomes a convenient excuse for law enforcement fishing expeditions and violent tactical reactions. California has already decided police can search your phone without a warrant and the list of municipalities willing to expand police power with warrantless searches and abuse of "probable cause" continues to grow.

The ugliest part of this whole "war" concept is that underneath all the tough talk and tougher action is a good old fashioned money grab. Reason cites Sen. Barbara Mikulski's quote, "We are at war, we are being attacked, and we are being hacked," while pointing out that Maryland is home to the U.S. Cyber Command Headquarters. A Baltimore Sun piece digs deeper into this money grab:

Mikulski, the state's senior senator, sits on the intelligence and appropriations committees. She said that she and Rep C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, who sits on the appropriations and intelligence committees in the House, are Maryland's "one-two punch" on Capitol Hill. Mikulski also was named recently to a cyber security task force, which will focus on governance, technology development and work force development nationwide.

O'Malley called for the establishment of a "National Center for Excellence for Cyber Security" in Maryland, more education and work force training, and an economic development strategy for cyber security in the state.

The computer design and services sector, which includes cyber security, employs about 60,000 mostly high-paid workers in Maryland, and grew despite the national recession, at a 7.2 percent annual clip through November 2009, state officials said.

Beginning in early 2008, towns across the country sought to lure Cyber Command's permanent headquarters. Authorities in Louisiana estimated that the facility would bring at least 10,000 direct and ancillary jobs, billions of dollars in contracts, and millions in local spending. Politicians naturally saw the command as an opportunity to boost local economies. Governors pitched their respective states to the secretary of the Air Force, a dozen congressional delegations lobbied for the command, and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal even lobbied President George W. Bush during a meeting on Hurricane Katrina recovery. Many of the 18 states vying for the command offered gifts of land, infrastructure, and tax breaks.

The city of Bossier, Louisiana, proposed a $100 million "Cyber Innovation Center" office complex next to Barksdale Air Force Base and got things rolling by building an $11 million bomb-resistant "cyber fortress," complete with a moat. Yuba City, California, touted its proximity to Silicon Valley. Colorado Springs pointed to the hardened location of Cheyenne Mountain, headquarters for NORAD. In Nebraska the Omaha Development Foundation purchased 136 acres of land just south of Offutt Air Force Base and offered it as a site.

Proposed cybersecurity legislation presents more opportunities for pork spending. The Cybersecurity Act of 2010, proposed by Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) called for the creation of regional cybersecurity centers across the country, a cyber scholarship-for-service program, and myriad cybersecurity research and development grants.

A rough Beltway consensus has emerged that the United States is facing a grave and immediate threat that can only be addressed by more public spending and tighter controls on private network security practices.

"Sony tried to sue a guy for getting his AIBO to do non-Sony approved tricks, making it apparent that they don’t really care about piracy, they care about control."

1. Very, very, very few apps make very much money. We've been suggesting this for a while, and the numbers seem to support it: there really isn't that much money being made directly on selling apps, even on the iPhone. Sure, lots of apps may be selling in aggregate, but very few individual apps make very much money.
2. Apps are still loss leader/low-margin leaders for hardware makers, and they know it. Sure, Apple wants app developers to be happy, but first and foremost it wants to sell more hardware, which is where it makes its money. And it knows as well as anyone that the more powerful the device is, the more reasons there are to buy the hardware. That means the hardware makers actually have incentive to push the price of apps down (or encourage free apps). This pressure will only get stronger over time.
3. Apps can be copied too. This is the one that seems the most obvious to me, but seems to get very little attention from those who believe totally in the app revolution. Apps are still digital files and they can (and are) copied regularly. Thinking that putting everything into an app is an easy response by itself to unauthorized copying is a bit short-sighted.
4. Future standards will break down some walls. While it won't happen that fast, and probably won't happen in all areas where apps exist, things like HTML 5 will certainly break down the walled gardens found on various app stores. Yes, native apps give a better user experience for now, but web standards will get better and better and allow more to be done via the web, totally bypassing any app gatekeeper (and paywall), just like Google did with Google Voice on the iPhone. We've seen this before. The desktop used to be ruled by client-side apps, and then lots of those apps went (or are in the process of going) web-based.
5. App overload. While there is a group of folks who constantly get new apps, an awful lot of people get a few apps, get themselves comfortable and then never go back to buy another app. There are really only so many apps most people need, and once they have them, there's little reason to keep getting more.