copyright

If You Purchased MLB Game Downloads Before 2006, Your Discs/Files Are Now Useless; MLB Has Stolen Your $$$ And Claims “No Refunds”

by

The Joy of Sox

This is a woeful story of mlbam’s apparent disregard for the customers who bought mlb.tv games and the digital rights management that is keeping them from watching those games.

If this is a true story it is an abysmal breach of faith by MLBAM, the sort of thing that undermines the basic compact between seller and buyer. But the funny thing reading this blog entry and the comments after (and at the Baseball Think Factory) is that there seems to be no corroboration.

If you’ve bought baseball games from mlb.com are you having this problem? It may be that Joy of Sox is one of just a few who felt the need to plunk down cash for games, but it’s also possible he’s having a problem that isn’t affecting everyone who bought games. Before ripping the Lords of Baseball a new one I’d like to make sure they’ve done it yet again.

iTunes 7.1.1 cracked

by

Boing Boing

I really like boing boing (oh, this has nothing to do with baseball), and I think Digital Rights Management is a fiasco, so when I read this post about the DRM at iTunes being cracked I should have felt excited. But instead I felt a little dirty.

If you don’t like the license agreement at iTMS you can go someplace else. They’re a store, and to say that they’re “evil” for selling stuff is dopey.

And to set out to crack their defense because they believe you’re a sleazy person who doesn’t want to pay for what the creator would like you to pay for (so you steal it) is certainly immoral.

If you’re a cracker and want to beat the iTMS DRM more power to you. But the issue here is one of license. Buy some songs at iTMS and they own the encoding, buy them at eMusic.com and you own them. While that isn’t a solution, it does point to a solution that I think works pretty clearly and fairly:

If you make something you get to sell it, and you get to set the rules. If you really don’t want people to copy your digital stuff you better have some sort of DRM encoding. And they get to choose not to buy it because they think DRM sucks. Or only listen to it on the radio, or in clubs.

That seems fair to me.