Why DRM is bad for you, me and my neighbor's dog.

Cory Doctorow gave an excellent talk to the Microsoft research group at Redmond on why DRM is ineffective, bad for business, bad for society, bad for artistes and bad for all the companies involved. Cory makes the excellent point that while DRM is totally ineffective (as in, it is never possible to protect media from being duplicated illegally as long as there is some way to play it legally) the entertainment industry is bent on creating legislation that makes it illegal to try to circumvent DRM - never mind the fact that you already own the media. So even if you buy a DVD, it is illegal to try to circumvent the built-in DRM to try to play it on your Linux box, or to copy it to a tape as a backup. The weirdest thing about DRM on DVDs is the region-encoding system used - If you buy a DVD in the US, you cannot play it in any other region, say Europe or Asia. Think about it - if you buy an audio tape, or a book in the US, would you be pissed if you could not play it or read if when you go abroad?

Continuing the general trend of help-me-I'm-drowning acts from the MPAA, they have pushed through legislation in California which makes it a misdemeanor to share files online without publishing your email address. Woohoo! Isn't that the holy grail for law enforcement? Now all you need to do in order to track a file sharer is the email address. Of course, someone hasn't heard of free email addresses, or even bogus ones.