Where I’m @

20031222

Still Free
As a follow-up to our recent post (well, not that recent) about DVD Jon, we are pleased to note that the most recent appeal of his case upheld the not guilty verdict. Maybe now his legal team can focus on defending the case most likely forthcoming around his cracking Apple’s iTunes security.

20031203

Back at Cracking
We’re heartened to see that DVD Jon (recently acquitted in his native Norge of breaking into data) has now posted a way to circumvent Apple’s data encryption for iTunes named QTFairUse. Not that we dislike Apple — we love them and wish them much well — but we like even more the notion that the music and software industry has got to do better than they are now doing w/r/t music sharing. It’s not, as if you didn't know this already, like the restraint of any other resource except software. You can’t limit use by territorializing it, you can’t criminalize it effectively, and as a practical matter you can’t make its use burdensome. It would seem that there is more than one success story out there of work athat has proliferated exactly as a result of embracing sharing and remixing (Missy Elliott, being the subject of a piece in last Sunday’s New York Times, is a singular example), so why aren’t those examples the signposts being used by the music industry?

(BTW, Our bet is that you’ll not be able to access DVD Jon’s actual posting, with the shrugged “So sue me” raspberry, nor the Google cache for all the attention this one’s getting in the media, but go ahead and try if you want.)