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Excerpt - The folks at Digg.com have let the social news genie out of the bottle, and now they can't control it. Since the HD-DVD encryption code was discovered and published, readers at Digg have been repeatedly submitting stories with the 16 digit hex code in the titles and bodies. Just as quickly as these posts crawl up the Digg charts, admins seem to be deleting them. Just search Google for 09 F9 and you'll find the key. Will AACS send a Cease and Desist to InfoWorld because I posted the text "09 F9"? If so, we might as well...

Digital radio receivers without government-approved copy-prevention technology likely would become illegal to sell in the future, according to new federal legislation announced Thursday. Rep. Mike Ferguson, a New Jersey Republican, said his bill--which would enforce a so-called "broadcast flag" for digital and satellite audio receivers--was necessary to protect the music industry from the threat of piracy....

Introduction You want to know a secret? None of the current ATI or NVIDIA graphics cards will support the full capabilities of Windows Vista. But let’s start from the beginning. This story starts with my upcoming LCD Monitor Round-Up. As you know, a good monitor should last several years and outlive every other component in your PC, other than perhaps a keyboard or a mouse. So, when it came time to do another review of LCD monitors, my attention turned towards “Windows Vista-ready” monitors: those with HDCP. After all, it makes no sense to recommend a monitor that will go...

Coldplay's new CD has rules: No MP3s, no DVD players, no car stereos Coldplay's new CD comes with an insert that discloses all the rules enforced by the DRM they included on the disc. Of course, these rules are only visible after you've paid for the CD and brought it home, and as the disc's rules say, "Except for manufacturing problems, we do not accept product exchange, return or refund," so if you don't like the rules, that's tough. What are the other rules? Here are some gems: "This CD can't be burnt onto a CD or hard disc, nor...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Sony BMG Music Entertainment said Tuesday some 5.7 million of its CDs were shipped with anti-piracy technology that requires a new software patch to plug a potential security breach in computers used to play the CDs. The security vulnerability was discovered by online civil liberty group Electronic Frontier Foundation and brought to the attention of Sony BMG, which has been under fire in recent weeks over security issues with an unrelated CD copy-protection plan. The company said Tuesday it brought the issue up with the MediaMax software maker, SunnComm Technologies Inc., which has developed a software...

Sony is in trouble but we might be the ones who lose out in the end, says technology commentator Bill Thompson. Sony says it has been using XCP for months Sony BMG, the record company part of the multinational corporation that makes laptops, TVs, movies and many other things, is in trouble this week thanks to a copy protection scheme it has used on a number of its CDs. The software, called Extended Copy Protection or XCP, hides itself on your hard drive using techniques normally reserved for viruses, worms and trojans, which use similar "rootkits" to evade detection. And...

Macrovision is expected to release a new DVD copy-protection technology Tuesday in hopes of substantially broadening its role in Hollywood's antipiracy effort. The content-protection company is pointing to the failure of the copy-proofing on today's DVDs, which was broken in 1999. Courts have ordered that DVD-copying tools be taken off the market, but variations of the software remain widely available online.

LONDON, England -- Video recorders have taken a step closer to extinction after Britain's largest electrical supplier said it would stop selling VCRs to concentrate on their successor, the DVD. [snip] Dixons said it now expected to sell its remaining stock of VCRs by Christmas, although other electrical retailers said they would continue to sell them for the foreseeable future.

The recording industry is testing technology that would prevent consumers from making copies of CD "burns," a piracy defense that could put some significant new restrictions on legally purchased music. Tools under review by the major labels would limit the number of backups that could be made from ordinary compact discs and prevent copied, or "burned," versions from being used to create further copies, according to Macrovision and SunnComm International, rivals that are developing competing versions of the digital rights management (DRM) software. SunnComm said a version of its new "secure burning" technology is already being tested by BMG Music...

REDMOND, Wash. (AP) — Microsoft Corp. is unveiling copyright protection software to allow rented songs or movies to be used on portable players, cellular phones and other devices. The company's latest "digital rights management" software, code-named Janus, was released Monday. It will give songs and videos purchased through subscription services a sort of digital expiration date that works even when the data is transferred from a computer. The technology also protects the content against piracy. The goal is to make it easier for companies who want customers to rent songs or videos, rather than own them, to also let those...

A Princeton University student has published instructions for disabling the new anti-copying measures being tested on CDs by BMG -- and they're as simple as holding down a computer's Shift key. In a paper published on his Web site Monday, Princeton Ph.D. student John Halderman explained how he disabled a new kind of copy-protection technology, distributed as part of a new album by BMG soul artist Anthony Hamilton. Under normal circumstances, the antipiracy software is automatically loaded onto a Windows machine whenever the Hamilton album is run in a computer's CD drive, making traditional copying or MP3 ripping impossible....

"Copyright is my right. Buy a license or you'll have trouble with the police," croons Egyptian pop singer Shaban Abd el-Reheem on his latest album. His recording is one of the many unconventional weapons waged in the battle to stop the rampant piracy of records, software, movies, and books in Egypt, whose 65 million people make up the biggest consumer market in the Middle East. In February, the Business Software Alliance, the group that represents Microsoft, Adobe, and other software makers concerned about piracy, signed up another unusual partner -- the grand muftis at Al Azhar in Cairo. The highest...

LONDON (Reuters) - Technology buffs have cracked music publishing giant Sony Music's elaborate disc copy-protection technology with a decidedly low-tech method: scribbling around the rim of a disk with a felt-tip marker. Internet newsgroups have been circulating news of the discovery for the past week, and in typical newsgroup style, users have pilloried Sony for deploying "hi-tech" copy protection that can be defeated by paying a visit to a stationery store. "I wonder what type of copy protection will come next?" one posting on alt.music.prince read. "Maybe they'll ban markers." Sony did not immediately return calls seeking comment. Major music...

Filed at 3:20 p.m. ET NEW YORK (Reuters) - A new batch of compact discs designed to defeat Napster-style piracy is coming soon to record-industry insiders. BMG, one of the world's five major labels, said on Monday it would start issuing promotional CDs -- the free discs distributed to critics, retailers and other insiders weeks before the official release -- with technological countermeasures to prevent copying. The major labels, which include Vivendi Universal, Sony Music, EMI Group, AOL Time Warner's Warner Music and Bertelsmann AG's BMG, hope that copy protection measures will prevent users from ''ripping,'' or copying the music...

LOS ANGELES (The Hollywood Reporter) --- Celine Dion's latest release is generating heated discussions on Internet message boards. But the subject under fire is not the star's music -- it's that the CD will not play on computer CD drives. Epic/Sony released "A New Day Has Come" embedded with Key2Audio copy protection in Germany and several other European countries. According to a spokeswoman for Sony Music Entertainment, it is clearly stated on the front of the booklet and on the back of the jewel box that the CD "will not play on a PC or a Mac" in the language...

<p>WASHINGTON -- Sen. Patrick Leahy says a controversial proposal to embed copy protection in electronics gear will not become law this year.</p> <p>Since Leahy is the powerful chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, his opposition instantly boosts the difficulty Hollywood studios will encounter in their attempts to enact sweeping copyright legislation.</p>

U.S. prepares to invade your hard driveA bill before Congress would mandate built-in copy-protection on all digital devices. But even technology experts who really want to protect intellectual property think it's a lousy idea.- - - - - - - - - - - -By Paul BoutinMarch 29, 2002  |  If you think techies hate Microsoft, try asking them about Hollings -- Sen. Ernest F. "Fritz" Hollings, that is, the South Carolina Democrat who finally introduced his long-dreaded copy protection bill into Congress last week. If there's an axis of evil for technology, Hollings has made the list. Hollings' bill,...

Democrats vs. New Media By Glenn Harlan Reynolds 03/27/2002 Terry McAuliffe is worried. What the Democratic National Committee chairman is worried about is asymmetrical political warfare: while the Democrats have done well with big donors and big media, they're being flanked by the Republican party, which has done far better with small donors and what might be called small media. He's been crisscrossing the country with a Powerpoint presentation that talks about how effectively the Republicans are using talk radio, Web message boards, and email-coordinated assaults on online polls. McAuliffe is especially worried because the campaign finance 'reform' bill that...

Chained melodiesCopyright-holding corporations are pushing new laws and computer-crippling technologies in their war on piracy. But can anything keep geeks from copying the music and movies they crave?- - - - - - - - - - - -By Damien CaveMarch 13, 2002  |  A sense of panic, instead of anticipation, coursed through Brian Cianessi when he bought the "More Fast and Furious" movie soundtrack just before Christmas. He had heard that the CD was one of the first to be copy-protected for sale in the U.S. market. He feared his days of music ripping would soon be over; Universal...