DRM ain't cool

Along with overlooking huge credit card debt and indulging in impulsive shopping, ticking off Steve Jobs is generally included on the Big List of Things Not to Do. That holds true for anyone from programmers to parking attendants, but especially for companies in the business of distributing digital entertainment, seeing as Apple Inc owns iTunes and iTunes owns the market. But suddenly these days, in a display of either intestinal fortitude or foolhardy bravado, people are starting to say no to Steve Jobs.

First it was UMG that pried loose from iTune stable. Today, it's NBC Universal bolting the barn, apparently feeling frisky about the prospects for Hulu, the video service it has in the works with News Corp.

Given that iPhone was set free recently from AT&T stranglehold by a 17 year old hacker, wonder why the breed is missing out on an opportunity to break into Apple’s DRM blocks that prevent iTune downloads in and out of devices other than iPods.

Hello hackers, where the hell are you? Hurry up, you’ve got a good thing going !

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"It's a Sony"...yeah...!

Last week when my daughter tried to download some music from a rookie site, I explained her how such acts can damage the system. Charily she gave in to my caution but not before extracting my word to get her a safer, branded CD that wouldn’t hurt the system.

I gave her the word alright, but will I be able to keep it after reading this? Imagine a Sony doing it, in its enthusiasm to invoke DRM…!

As painstakingly analyzed by Mark Russinovich on the Sysinternals blog, the CDs secretly plant a rootkit on Windows PCs. As David Berlind explains at ZDNet, “Rootkits generally latch themselves onto the foundation or ‘roots’ of an operating system in a variety of ways that not only prevent their detection, but also their extraction”.

Russinovich concludes: “The entire experience was frustrating and irritating. Not only had Sony put software on my system that uses techniques commonly used by malware to mask its presence, the software is poorly written and provides no means for uninstall. Worse, most users that stumble across the cloaked files with a RKR scan will cripple their computer if they attempt the obvious step of deleting the cloaked files.”

I'd rather tell my kid - “Excuse me, hun…this is one word that I’d better not keep. Will make it up to you in some other way....It's a Sony, yeah...” Hoping that she relents !

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