35 Days Against DRM: MacBook

Once again, Apple have pushed their DRM agenda even further, with the release of the latest revision of their MacBook laptop computers. The new MacBooks contain a hardware chip that prevents certain types of display being used, in an effort to plug the analog hole. 

Defective by Design: MacBook

Source: DefectiveByDesign.org

MSN Music to shut down, leaving DRM customers in the lurch

Microsoft is ceasing support for its MSN Music service. After August 31, 2008, people who have bought music from the service will no longer be able to move that music to different computers, or even change the operating system on their current computers.

DefectiveByDesign.org reports what happens if one trusts companies selling proprietary software and non free codecs.

With restricted music, every time you move it to a new system, you have to get new approval. Microsoft is shutting down the servers that currently grant that approval, which leaves everyone who bought music from them holding locks with no keys, and no recourse.

…

This isn’t the first time people have had access to their music and movies revoked (we’re looking at you, MLB and Google Video), and it won’t be the last unfortunately. But thankfully, this mode of selling media is dying. It was one thing when the threat of revocation was just some fine print, but now that it’s become a demonstrated reality, people are voting with their dollars for DRM-free living.

DRM on Ebooks

You Buy a Lock, But You Don’t Own the Key!

Don’t let DRM get between you and a good book
Amazon, Sony, and others want to change the way you read: They want to put locks on your books. Their “ebook readers” use Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology to control how, what, and when you can read.

DRM locks ebooks
DRM locks your ebook to a device. When the device breaks or becomes outdated, you can’t open your book. You get a lock, but you do not get a key! If you try to pick a DRM lock to try to read your ebook on another device, you break US Federal Law.

DRM on ebooks hurts authors
The owners of the DRM technology choose which books, newspapers, or magazines can be read on your device.

With DRM on ebooks, everybody loses
Every few years you will have to buy a new copy of your favorite books, and a new ebook reader to go along with it.
Any ability to lend your ebook to family or friends is severely limited at the whim of the DRM owner. For the future of reading: Don’t buy ebook readers that use DRM technology—our books will end up locked shut.

Learn more about DRM and how to fight it at
DefectiveByDesign.org

More information on the amazon e-book reader on my blog.
This information as a flyer.

Source: Don’t let DRM get between you and a good book- Defective By Design

Act against Amazon

Amazon did the right thing with selling DRM free (= not copy protected and no lock-in) music.
But as it seems this decision was only done with having increased sells in mind. As the FSF puts it

… It seems that Amazon only cares to oppose DRM when they can profit from it, such as when they advertise their MP3’s as “Play Anywhere, DRM-Free Downloads.” The same is not true for Kindle ebooks. Perhaps if they were honest they would advertise their ebooks as “Play Only Here, DRM-Laden Kindle Ebooks.” …

But what is this kindle? It is an electronic paper hardware which allows you to read e-books. Which is just fine. But the e-books which you can buy from amazon.com are DRM infected, which means that you can only read them with kindle and no other hardware or software. This is the kind of vendor lock-in which is stealing users rights.
If we are to accept this, chances are that the broad rights you have with books will be gone. Amazons found even said this in the year 2002

When someone buys a book, they are also buying the right to resell that book, to loan it out, or to even give it away if they want. Everyone understands this.

Now he is trying to destroy this rights.

But what CAN we do to prevent this? Obviously enough: Don’t buy e-books from amazon.com and show them that we don’t like this kind of lock-in and stealing of user rights.

Secondly it’s very important to tell others about this (which I do right now). A nice way of doing this is to tag the kindle e-books on amazon.com with

kindle swindle, defectivebydesign, drm

If enough people tag the products with this, people will recognize it and will ask questions.

Howto (from defectivebydesign.org):

Amazon makes it very easy to tag pages if you have javascript enabled.

• Go to a product page.
• Press “tt”.
• Enter the tags: kindle swindle, defectivebydesign, drm

If javascript is not enabled pressing “tt” will fail. So instead, merely enter the above tags under the section titled “Tags customers associate with this product.”Our goal is to make “Kindle Swindle” the number one tag on the Kindle and on Kindle ebooks, so please help us and get tagging!

Also helpful is the list of all kindle related products so you can go and tag them one after one.

More Information
More Details on the kindle swindle
The complete howto for acting against amazon’s kindle swindle