Inside the mind of Jamie Starke

This webcomic (http://xkcd.com/488/) was released today, and I think it has a very valid point specifically in the context of what Mr. Prentice is trying to do to the Canadian Copyright system.  Although I myself still purchase large numbers of CD's and DVDs, there are those out there that do pirate media, or purchase their media through legal means which use some kind of Digital Rights Management (DRM).

The problem with what Mr. Prentice has proposed with Bill C-61 is that there are 3 Major operating systems (Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux).  The truely unfortunate thing is that these DRM based companies usually leave 1 or 2 of these operating systems out of their schemes, meaning, should any of these individuals that purchases their media through legal means end up on one of these systems (such as mac os x or linux), their media is now inoperable.  Lets look at one of these legal media systems.  For instance, lets take the Walmart music site.  This system uses WMA supported DRM.  Now, lets say when the user signed up for the site, this worked perfectly well for their needs, but last month, they purchased an iPod (The largest mobile music player on the market).  The music that they have legally paid for would fail to play on this major music system. 

Walmart is a classic example of why DRM is bad.  For DRM to function correctly, a server needs to maintain who is the legal owner of a music file.  Last week, Walmart decided to shut down their Music store, thus turning off this server, which in essense, made authentication of these users files impossible, and they lost the ability to play them, through no fault of their own.  Should one of these users try to 'break' this DRM to play a song that they legally purchased, under bill C-61, they would be liable for $20000 in damages. 

Now back to the cartoon (http://xkcd.com/488/).  As you can see, this cartoon is very truthful in reality.  Many users are faced with two choices, those that download illegal, DRM-free content (see piracy) or those that purchase their content legally.  Those that purchase legally have a chance that the situation will change (sometimes beyond their control, see http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/10/wal-mart-will-c.html), and their purchases will become obsolete, and be unusable, and any action to render these files playable, would be a violation under bill C-61, and would could face a $20000 fine, and thus make the person a criminal.  If the person instead downloads the content illegally to begin with, but DRM free, they will face a much smaller fine if caught ($500), but their content will be consistently, and often universally playable, no matter how their circumstances change.  Is this really the message we want to send to our citizens?  It is better to do the illegal thing first off, because if you purchase legally, and someone else changes how they feel the media should be used or your circumstances change, you'll still be more of a criminal anyway?

To anyone that things Bill C-61 is behind us, your wrong.  On October 7th, with the Conservative Party's platform they made a "pledge to reintroduce copyright reform".  This will likely again mean lots of Closed door discussions with Media lobby groups from south of the border, and no consumer involvement. 

Make a stand for Canada, and Tell Mr. Prentice that you think Canada deserves and Open Democracy, where Everyone gets a say.

Is your information secure? Many operating systems these days come with some type of a disk encryption system that protects the files on your hard drive. But how secure is it? Studies have shown that in a lot of cases, these tools can be broken with little difficulty if the attacker has physical access to the computer. How can this be done? Well, if the computer is on, or in a hibernated state (when you open it, it immediately shows a password prompt) the encryption key is regularly stored in memory. If the power is cut, and specific software is used, the encryption key can usually be taken before it is lost from memory. Check out the information available at this site.

It appears that in a server misconfiguration over the weekend, Facebook released the frontpage source code for their website (Incase they get a takedown, I included the google cached location).

So, what does this mean you may ask yourself? Well, that is a two fold answer. First off, this may make it easier for malicious users to try to take advantage of any security holes (access to private user info?). Second, lets face it, wen your getting sued by somebody, and their claiming that you are stealing their Intellectual Property (in this case, the source code), you have either made it REALLY hard or REALLY easy for them to get a court order demanding your source code. If there is any part of the code that is taken from their stuff, they'll have a really easy time proving cause when asking the court to temporarily shut down the site, and also subpoena the source code. Lets all hope for Facebooks sakes that they didn't just make a REALLY stupid move.

And if nothing else, its an interesting read out there for any PHP coders!