Anti-DRM efforts in Boston and Cambridge

[Robert La Ferla]

On Jun 7, 2006, at 6:35 AM, Jerry Feldman wrote:

> I received this from Peter Brown of the FSF:
>
>
> What is wrong with Apple and iTunes?
> We have always been able to buy music and copy it for our personal
> needs. We've all made mix tapes for our friends, or burned a copy for
> our car, or for our portable device. Big Media figured that with  
> digital
> technology they could find a way to stop us from doing these things in
> the hope that they could make us pay for every use. Apple has  
> introduced
> DRM into their product lines to please Big Media, and to start to  
> impose
> restrictions and monitoring. As the largest distributor of DRM
> technology Apple is setting a new low for the mistreatment of our
> freedoms.


DRM is evil but it is a bit misguided to take aim at Apple's DRM.   
Apple is "reasonable" when it comes to fair use.  You can authorize  
up to FIVE players to listen to your iTunes music and you can even  
burn your music to a plain unprotected audio CD.  I think time would  
be better spent focusing on HDCP (high definition content protection)  
and Microsoft's DRM in the upcoming Windows Vista release which are  
by far more draconian (to use M$ lingo.)