BoingBoing reported on friday that EMI is using very popular brazilian singer Marisa Monte’s new CDs to install malware on user’s computer. The rootkit blocks playing on Linux, MacOs and iPod, just as the brazilian government launched a project aiming to distribute 1 million linux PCs to the brazilian people.
We’ve seen this a few months ago, when Sony did the same thing, and then apologise when the whole thing blew way over proportions.

Am I the only one that noticed that 2 days after new builds of Windows Vista were released to the public, Bill Gates announced it will be delayed?
In other news, all Microsoft partners drop a few points at the stock market, because of this announce.
There’s something wrong in Denmark!

There are news all over the place about what’s going on in France with the DRM laws.
But, what do the french really want?
What we all want, actually.

The issue is simple. If I paid for this product, it legally belongs to me and I am free to use it the way i find it fit. If I want to see movies on it, I will. If I want to run other content on a standalone dvd player I own, i should not be stopped to do that. Because it’s mine. If it breaks, Steve Jobs don’t pay for it, I do.

The logic of what Apple and others are doing escapes me. I can’t copy a song i bought more than a few times. I can’t run home-made dvds on my standalone player. If the ideea behind this, stoping piracy, is ok, the results are limiting/breaking my civil liberties. What if next time the press sais we can’t read they newspaper only on the 16th bus? Or the tv stations ask us to watch them wearing red socks?

The same thing goes for the dvd players. I captured a party on my camera and i want to put it on DVD. Does my dvd writer know to write the informations that the player recognizes as original dvd and plays it?
If it does, there goes the copy protection.
If it doesn’t, then it’s kinda useless, because I can’t play my home made dvds.

At the base of DECSS (dvd copy protections remover) were the same principles. I want to be able to copy my own dvds, that I paid for. I want to put them on my hard-drive. I want to run them from linux. I want to add more subtitles to them.

It is mine and I should be able to do whatever I want with it.