This is interesting. Defective by Design is hosting 35 days against DRM, during which they will pick a product that everyone should boycott in order to speak their mind about how much they think DRM sucks.

Their first product, sadly enough, is the new Macbook.

Why am I not surprised that they’ve targeted Apple?

It seems like Apple is a fair target for anyone these days. The Apple hatred has almost gotten as bad as the Windoze hatred that was so popular a few years ago, before Steve Jobs came back to Apple and made Apple cool again. Sometimes, I think that geeks really do just want to be different and they don’t care what they have to do to accomplish that.

I understand that Apple has pandered to the DRM gods, but they had to do this in order to be successful. No one else was even willing to consider negotiating with them, the fact that Apple had the foresight to go there and say, “Hey, we have the most popular MP3 player on the planet.… [Read More]

35 Days Against DRM

Okay… this is just great. I know I’ve been quiet other than sharing news about my car, and my escapades with my car, but really… this had to be shared.

107,951$ in judgment against the RIAA in Atlantic v. Anderson. It’s about friggin’ time!

And note that the MSM is completely ignoring this news! There is no word of this on the front page of Google at all.… [Read More]

Two Largest Judgments in RIAA Cases were Against the RIAA.

Come on people! iTunes will gladly let you put DRM free mp3′s from other services on board its device. If you’ve got a problem with WMA files, stop downloading them! Microsoft is only pulling the WMA thing because they want you to buy a Zune.

This lady’s claim has some serious issues that anyone who understands this technology will look at and see immediately. In fact, the majority of her claims are so laughable that it’s the only reason I bothered to share the article at all. If she gets a judge who bothers to keep up on technology at all, I fully expect that he (or she) will laugh this woman out of the court room.

Read the article and get a good laugh. This isn’t the first time that someone has filed against Apple for violations of the Sherman Anti-Trust act, and I doubt it will be the last, but it certainly is the dumbest I have seen by far.… [Read More]

And yet another idiot files a lawsuit…

Oh the bad, bad thing that I have started this morning.

Today, I downloaded my first song from iTunes. I know that this is the start of an ongoing trend. Periodically, I’ll get songs stuck in my head, and on a whim I’ll go download them. It’s far too easy to do. I just have a certain amount of guilt over the particular song I chose to download today. It was a pop song, I mean come on… what was I thinking?

Watch the video on youtube, and feel free to laugh.

Unwritten – Natasha Bedingfield.… [Read More]

It begins.

On the 19th of this month, Rolling Stone released an article which discussed the decline of the recorded music business, and attempted to analyze it’s fall.

Much of this article makes complete sense and it is precisely what many music lovers have been saying since the RIAA filed its original lawsuit against Napster. Give us digital music. Do not tell us how we will listen to music that we pay for the right to listen to, we will decide that for ourselves, thanks. Do give us a better way to fill our lives with music at a price that makes sense.

Note what I said there: Pay for the right. Most people believe that when they pay for something, that means they own it. Now, obviously I don’t have the right to release tons of copies of James Blunt’s latest CD and make money off of them… but *I* do have the right to listen to the CD because I paid money for it!… [Read More]

A Music Lover’s Response to Rolling Stone.

Ian C. Rogers, General Manager of LaunchCast has posted an open letter to users of LaunchCast about why it is that Yahoo! decided to take the service offline for today. It explains the complete history of the process that is the rate hike that will put Internet Radio Stations out of business.

Read it, then write your representatives! Save Net Radio!… [Read More]

The Silence Must Be Heard!

I don’t think that people should get something for nothing, unless the net value of said item is, in fact, nothing. However, this is ridiculous and the RIAA should be slapped for this.

Tomorrow, the majority of major internet radio stations will be going offline to protest a rate increase that goes in effect on July 1st, which is retroactive to January 2006. This rate increase will destroy these small, blossoming businesses before they even have the chance to get off the ground.

The reality of this is, the RIAA wants to control how you receive your music and if it doesn’t meet with their known methods of control, they will find a Senator who will legislate that method out of business for them.

Do the right thing: Save Net Radio… [Read More]

Save Net Radio: The Day of Silence

This is an interesting article from a current iPod owner on why he will switch to a Zune when microsoft releases the device.

What I find most amusing about this, is that a lot of his complaints are a large portion of why I chose not to buy another Sony music player. SonicStage had all of the same problems that this guy complains about with iTunes. It was cumbersome, image heavy, took forever to convert things and periodically, for whatever random reason, chose to delete files from my music collection when I would burn them to minidisc. It was never a whole album either, and never all of the songs that I’d transferred onto one particular disc in one sitting, so I wouldn’t call it a user error. Also, when my hard drive went belly up, I had no way to get those songs back off of the minidisc and onto my hard drive again.… [Read More]

iPod vs. Zune

This is an interesting set of theses for geeks. A lot of the ideas set forth here are things I agree with and think that the average man doesn’t think about. I know, for example, that my mother argues and struggles with proprietary software for her mp3 player because of DRM but I’m certain she doesn’t know what DRM is and why she has to contend with it.

Even if you aren’t a geek, this list has a plethora of things that you need to know. Not that you should know, want to know or are in anyway remotely optional. Anyone who wants to have a right to not have a video camera in their bedroom twenty years down the road needs to know these things. Read on dear viewers.… [Read More]

The 95 Theses of Geek Activism

Recently in an online chat channel, I made a confession that I own a creative zen micro. The reaction I got to this surprised me. “I can’t believe it. Isn’t each state only allowed to have one zen owner?”

The next morning the news articles started coming out with rumors of Microsoft’s “Zune” player and those articles put Apple’s share of the mp3 player market at 80% of all mp3 players owned. It made me think hard about why people wanted an iPod, and why I didn’t choose to get one.

The biggest reason is probably that I already owned a Sony PSP. The PSP is a supreme device for watching portable video on, with great sound and even better video. The video iPod did not tempt me with its small screen and sound quality that true audiophiles rate as being not bad, but not all that, even with high quality headphones.… [Read More]

Why I didn’t jump on the iPod bandwagon.