While I personally have spent the majority of the day focusing on the Virginia Tech shootings, this does not preclude the necessity in reporting on other news, particularly in the area of American copyright law becoming ever more repressive.
Today has brought a series of events that will be overshadowed by the shootings, but bear significance nonetheless.
First off, you would think that Sony would have learned something a year and a half ago after its DRM rootkit scandal involving spyware placed on DRM'd music CD's. While this fiasco killed DRM for music CD's (which was failing already ) Sony has apparently decided that repeating history is better than learning from it. Recently, Sony came out with a new DRM scheme for DVD's sold by Sony Pictures, which can't even be played on their own DVD players. According to the conversation that a consumer had with a Sony tech support official, there will not be an update to fix this DRM bug for up to a month! On top of that, this solution will only fix the problem that exists between the DRM'd DVDs and Sony-made DVD players! I doubt that Sony is trying something along the lines of Apple's itunes lock-in but things like this make me wonder...
In other FUBAR Copyright news, the RIAA has been handled a pair of unfortunate victories today.
The first is in the area of the Capital v. Foster, in which the judge allowed for the case to be dismissed, and required the RIAA to pay the defendant's attorney fees. Unfortunately, Debbie Foster's efforts to force the RIAA to disclose its attorney fees (and how much of the money is actually GIVEN to the ARTISTS) was denied. Just wondering...can't this information be found by looking up information on the taxes paid by the record labels, or by looking at the taxes of the law firm(s) they use? If the RIAA is really helping the artists by calling in a storm of lawyers, then they better not simply be chasing ambulances.
The RIAA's second victory comes in the form of moving one step closer in killing internet radio. Their auxilary wing for online royalties, SoundExchange, is thrilled, for obvious reasons Gee, if the royalties are too high for small webcasters, then who will be able to afford to player RIAA/Sound Exchange songs? Why, only the very wealthy...and that means companies who are part of the current payola regime. This whole thing can still be appealed to Congress, so we still have hope. But when Democrats like Howard Berman are chairing subcommittees for intellectual property laws, it's hard to say.
Now...does anyone here still think that the DNC's decision to hire a top RIAA shill for the convention, is a good idea? The RIAA is yet another reason why we need full public funding for elections.