The war between Blue-Ray and HD-DVD is still in the beginning which frustrates the consumers. One nail in the Blue-Ray coffin might have been added today by a guy who managed to hack the HD-DVD encryption. Being able to backup the expensive HD-DVD movies could win the format war. Most users will not be able to backup their HD-DVDs right away because the process sounds a little bit complicated and the author of the code did not reveal all the information how he managed to rip a HD-DVD movie but the source is available which means that many programmers will take a look and create advanced versions of it.
How to remove the DRM from iTunes music
Itunes is the most successful music store in the world, if you do not count stores that have their office in Russia. One of the biggest disadvantages if iTunes is that the music that you purchase has DRM protection build into them. This protection makes it impossible to play those files on other mp3 players than the ipod for instance. This turns out really bad if you want to buy a new mp3 player which is not manufactured by Apple.
Movie studios vs. their customers Part 2
Just a few weeks ago I was reporting that Universal Studios was receiving it’s share from every Zune player sold and asked my readers to consider this before buying a Zune player because it could very well be the precedent of something that Universal, and other movie studios, wanted: A share of every media player that is being sold. Apparently they were quick to act.
How to bypass the DRM of Microsoft’s Zune
Every song that you send to someone else from your Zune is restricted to a limit number of plays before it becomes useless on the recipients Zune. This is really bad if you want to swap music files that you created on your own for example. There is however a (rather complicated) way to transfer files from one Zune to the other without those DRM restrictions. First you need to enable hard drive mode in your operating system.
Down with DRM Video Contest Winners
Freeculture.org held a drm video contest earlier this year and announced the winners of this contest today. All videos had to be uploaded to a public video site to make sure they would spread pretty fast around the global community. I decided to post all videos from youtube right away here at deny but you could also visit freeculture to see them at their website or bookmark their site. (do it)
The industry fights some unnecessary battles
I watched the movie Crank last saturday in a cinema near my hometown, it was a great movie but something that happened before the film really annoyed the hell out of me. Why the hell are they showing clips that it is illegal to record the movie with cams and that you will face jail time for it before the movie starts ? How likely is it that someone who has the intention to record the movie is actually in there ? How much more likely is it that many visitors who paid lots of money to watch the movie are pretty annoyed by this message ?
Copy-protected CDs turning music fans off record buying
Well this is no big news to the internet community. We, more than everyone else, are keen on using new media devices and like to be among the first when it comes to technology in general. A survey among canadian music retailers now found out what we actually now for a very long time: Copy protection is bad for business. Customers are more frequently than before returning cds which they could not play in their personal computer or copy to their mobile player. Retailers also observe that customers tend to put cds down when they spot the copy protected logo.
