Hi, Sorry about the OT, but the FSF have had a campaign against DRM in general for quite some time, hosted at their website http://www.defectivebydesign.org. Their latest focus has been against Amazon for their stupid removal of copies of books from Kindle devices *after* the users had bought them from an Amazon partner. As a stroke of irony, one of the books was 1984! The reason given was that the book copyright was owned by some organisation other than the partner.
Anyway, this is a US problem really, because the Kindle is not yet available in Europe and also because 1984 has been out of copyright in Europe and most other territories for a few years now. However, I suspect that wouldn't have stopped them if there had been any UK owners. Amazon plan to launch Kindle in Europe later this year. The point of the campaign is that the use of DRM and other technologies allowed Amazon to do this. I have been an opponent of DRM on principle for some time, plus I was considering buying a Kindle when it came out (not any more). So if you think that DRM is wrong and/or you abhor Amazon's action, please consider signing the petition at http://www.defectivebydesign.org/amazon1984/. BTW, I am aware that the Sony and other book readers also use DRM to 'protect' 'content', even that which has been in the public domain for years, so personally I wish this campaign was targeted at all book readers that use DRM. The music industry has begun to realise that DRM is a liability rather than an asset, so it's time that the eBook industry followed, their (very overdue) lead. -- Terry Coles 64 bit computing with Kubuntu Linux -- Next meeting: Dorchester, Tuesday 2009-09-01 20:00 Dorset LUG: http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ Chat: http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.blitzed.org&channel=%23dorset List info: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dorset
