Solveig Singleton over at IP central presents a view that breaking DRM might not be a good thing. The post pulled me up a little. I’m very happy that the DRM has been broken on the next generation of DVDs. Solveig asks why it’s a good thing and the answers to his questions are not obvious.
Is DRM bad for consumers? They’re free to walk away are they not he asks. I don’t think this is sufficient but I’m happy to be proved wrong.
First of all, it’s simple to walk away from commodity items or find substitutes. Creative works such as films are not easily substitutable – you can’t argue that if you’re unhappy with the DRM on the latest Tom Cruise film, you can just not watch it or watch the BBC instead. Each work is a little monopoly in it’s own right.
Could you simply buy the DVD instead of the High Defenition version? Sure but it’s got it’s own DRM and I challenge anyone to be able to find a VHS copy of this years oscar winners.
Secondly, the markets argument implies that DRM protected content will be cheaper since the studios will be able to charge different prices for people that want different versions of the film. But they’re clearly not even attempting to do this. There’s no version of any film available today which allows me to pay extra to copy it onto my iPod and the studios have shown no willingness to do this.
Yes it’s wrong to copy your friends DVD, but it’s not wrong to make a backup of that copy of Shrek 2 so your kids can’t destroy the original, or to move a copy to your iPod to watch during a train ride. These legal rights have been taken away by DRM and as such it should be good that it’s been broken. Don’t even get me started on region coding which is a transparent attempt at market manipulation.
People are willing to pay for entertainment as shown by the amount of money spent on DVD sales today. For some reason they’re even willing to pay more to watch it in high defenition. The studios are attempting to turn a simple purchase transaction into a one sided licience and this drives people crazy. You bought it, you own it, you can do a bunch of stuff with it as long as you don’t copy it and sell the copies. No sane person would argue with this. Why can the studios not see that?

Hard on the heels of the annoucement by the minister responsible for the road charging scheme that a million signatures on a petition do not constitute a landslide of opinion, (The Telegraph has the news that people who signed the petition from work may face disciplinary action. The petition requires that you give a valid email address (so obviously you don’t feel tracked at all) and using a work email address has been likened to “writing a letter using headed notepaper”.
The petition, now up to 1.5million signatures continues to gather momentum and the government continues to spin that it’s not important. This veiled threat is just one more attempt to scare people into not signing – the first place to mention the threat to employees was a police department.
This scheme is so corrupt that even the process of consultation includes threats.
I actually agree with the general theory of road charging — you pay for the road you use according to when and how far you drive. If implemented by the removal of the road tax and the petrol tax it could even be cost neutral for the population as a whole. It’s the terror we all feel that

1. We’ll end up paying twice – it’s already clear we’ll have to pay for the equipment and installation which looks to be a few hundred pounds
2. We’ll end up being tracked – do we honestly think we won’t start getting speeding tickets in the post when the system we pay to install squeals on us
3. It just won’t work – does anyone think the government has the capability to pull this off?

UPDATE (21/2/2007)
This morning in my mail box I received a nice mail from Tony Blair responding to the petition on ID cards which I’d also signed. Only 28,000 people signed this one so it’s trivial to ignore, still he took the time to do so.
The response essentially said “I see you don’t want these, well I do and here’s why”. If there was no way they were going to listen to the petition, why is it there? It would be more honest to simply remove the whole site and say “Look, we don’t pay any attention to this. Mail us is you’d liike us to explain why we’re going to do all this stuff anyway”

Claire Short is the previous Labour minister for international development who quit the government in 2003 over the Iraq war scandal in the UK. She gave a sort of interview/informal talk at the Frontline Club (www.frontlineclub.com) on Valentines evening of all dates. It all sounded very interesting and so I poppoed up to Paddington this evening to see how Claire comes across. The whole thing was taped so when they get around to putting up a link I’ll point you in the right direction.
The event was surprisingly well attended with between 40 and 50 people in the audience. It’s a nice cosy venue with a very intimate feel. Starting only a few minutes late, Claire answered some background on why she quit, her feelings on the war and Afghanistan and various topical internation events. She’s very impressive and able to easily come up with anecdotes and entertaining stories on the fly though obviously these topics are well covered ground for her. After about 45 minutes the floor was opened to questions.
Claire is pretty scathing about Tony Blair and sniped at him throughout the evening, painting him as all spin and media and no substance. In her own words she had a great plan for the middle east and Tony flubbed the whole thing. She holds little hope for Gordon Brown to improve anything though there is a scenario in which he could elegantly back us out of Iraq and patch something up.
The questions were for more interesting. It quickly became obvious that this audience was composed primarily of journalists and political activists. The questions were good if slightly generic. The first controversy of the evening was from a Congolese journalist who attacked Claire for what he perceived as the failing of the UKs interventions in the region and support of Rwanda. He was pretty vocal. Unfortunately, Claires response was good but contained a few ad hominem attacks that kind of diminished it. Later an american women asked if Claire “was for the evisceration of Israel”. The very left leaning audience tuttered and muttered and after a reasonably cuttinng remark from Claire laughed out loud. This topic was a slam dunk – execpt for the person asking the question no-one in the room supported Israels actions but Claire still threw in a few personal remarks about the women. For someone who criticises Tony Blair for being all about the media and soundbites she certainly knows, and doesn’t hesitate to use, the same tricks.
That said, and while I disagreed with about a third of her statements, she’s incredibly smart and well informed. I imagine debating her one on one would be incredibly stimulating (and I’d probably loose). The Frontline was a great venue and even though you have to cough up £7 for the priviledge it’s something I’d recommend to anyone interested in politics.

Got around to watching Arlington Road today. I have some kind of strange Jeff Bridges fetish since I really like just about everything he’s done — this was no different.
It’s the fantastic build of tension as Jeff’s character slowly becomes convinced that Tim Robbins is up to no good. Robbins has been another favourite ever since the Player and here he exudes sinister. He’s perfectly cast. The final denoument is also great – a lovely twist turning most of what you’ve assumed around.

I’m finally at that age when my 12 year old niece is overtaking me technically. Well not just yet, for one thing I own more stuff than her. However, her generation is the first one growing up with pervasive Internet access and on-line social contact. For me it’s difficult to remember not having a VCR or a microwave. She’ll be amazed to hear we didn’t always have cell phones and email.
So in an attempt to claw back a little credibility with her – and for a few other reasons – I’m launching a blog and finally sharing all that digital booty I have stored on my macintosh. It will be interesting to see if this gets read by anyone aside from my family. I’m hoping to do a couple of things

• Keep track of all the movies and books I go through and what I thought of them at the time – kind of a digital memory aid. Mostly books since I read so many of the damn things
• Comment on some the vast volume of news and articles I go through every day
• Have somewhere to spout off about topics of interest, mostly about privacy, liberty, politics etc.