Category Archives: Copyright

Cyberlink PowerDVD irritations

A few minutes ago I was about to prepare a post, and this involved grabbing a couple of screen shots from websites to illustrate my points. But the Windows PrtScn and Alt-PrtScn snapshot facility wouldn’t work, or at least wouldn’t … Continue reading

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Copy Protection

Perhaps the most amazing thing about some DVDs is that they play at all, given the trouble that DVD makers go to copy protect them. This is what AnyDVD HD has to say about the Toy Story DVD (which comes … Continue reading

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Piracy

The other day one of my daughters announced that she had borrowed from a friend the entire ten season series of ‘Friends‘ on DVD. When she showed me the box, a slim, professional looking, cardboard affair containing only five DVDs, … Continue reading

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KaZaa vs CDs

Human motivations and actions are usually muddy, so it ought not be surprising to find that studies on the impact on CD sales of people using P2P networks to cheaply obtain music is unclear. However the Freedom to Tinker Blog … Continue reading

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The Simpsons joust with Disney

The Simpsons have a lot of fun with copyright in many episodes (Mary Poppins, for example), but watching the episode ‘Round Springfield‘ (Season 6, Episode 22, code 2F32), even more fun is had. Towards the end, moments after the deceased … Continue reading

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CD Copy Protection Woes

Ian writes: I’ve just read your article on copy-protected CDs and I must say it was a very interesting read. I received the Robbie Williams album today but am having problems ripping the tracks to mp3. I have always used … Continue reading

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CD emphasis calls for caution in ripping

There is a little-known feature of CDs called emphasis. This is primarily a noise and distortion reduction mechanism, provided for when CDs were first designed over twenty years ago. In short, the idea is that the engineer boosts the treble before … Continue reading

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Copying files with DRM

The always interesting Gene Expression Blog has an interesting discussion on the futility of Digital Rights Management on music files.

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I Hate DRM, or why MP3 will be forever with us

Declan McCullagh’s invaluable Politech mailing list is carrying an item by a poor chap who purchased a pile of music from Apple’s Music Store. No problems until two things happened: he moved from the US to Canada, and his computer system crashed. … Continue reading

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Does downloading music cost CD sales?

Tim Blair links to a story from The Scotsman which claims ‘research’ shows that people ‘who illegally download their favourite tracks from the internet still buy albums in the shops’. Hmmm. This seems to be a case of asking people questions, rather … Continue reading

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