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Who Owns Your iPod?
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The federal government is about to table new copyright legislation, perhaps as early next week, in an attempt to update our copyright laws for the digital age.
But other than the expected publicity over downloading and sharing music few Canadians are aware of the ramifications of the proposed new laws.
The basis of the new laws relate to something called Digital Rights Management (DRM). DRM protects copyrighted material via locks on the material that keeps you from copying, say, your favourite movie DVD, and handing it out to your friends.
On one level this is a good thing, since the copyright holder (the movie studio, rock band etc.) put plenty of money into producing that DVD. But DRM goes much deeper than just protecting copyright material, and under the new proposed laws could impact your actual ownership of the device you play that material on.
Under the proposed laws DRM will also apply to the device that plays the material. In essence when you buy that iPod you are actually only RENTING it.
In a recent opinion piece in IT World, Russell McOrmond, policy co-ordinator for the Canadian Association for Open Source (CLUE), fired the latest salvo in the debate when he wrote that DRM infringes on a consumer's property rights. He said that when a device or content manufacturer offers up a cellphone or a DVD with DRM on it, the company is actually renting the product rather than selling it.
"It is obvious that if I own something … it is me and not someone else that maintains the keys for any locks applied to what I own," he wrote. "Non-owner locks on technology are based on the idea that the manufacturer of the device, not the owner, should control who has keys to the locks they have applied."
A bit long-winded but it certainly makes you stop and think a bit before heading off to the mall to pick up the latest and greatest electronic gizmo. All of this, of course, comes at a time when Google is about to launch a new service that will allows ebooks to be read on just about any reader out there.
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Source: CBC News, Canadian Association for Open Source
Written by PropellerHed
Our resident code jockey is the person responsible for the look / feel / nifty new applications on Teeswater.Ca. Mathan has been a computer nut (one step beyond fanatic) since he built his first analog computer out of bits of wire and spare parts back in 1973 ( Think of Charles Babbage’s Thinking Machine). Since 1976 he has worked on / tinkered with / programmed just about every kind of computer from laptops to mainframes. In 1991 he caught the Internet bug, first running his own 2 line bulletin board system then expanding into Web applications and development, winning numerous industry awards along the way. Currently he can be found in a dark corner of the kitchen muttering about how Windows® is ruining the world and waxing poetic about Fedora 15 (Linux).
Filed under: Technology
Tags: Canadian, DRM, DVD, IT
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