e nerds who stormed the nation’s Apple Stores last Friday, wrote us in response to our recent post, calling our attention to a write-up he did of Defective Design’s protest at Boston’s Cambridge Side Galleria. The fuzz seemed pretty cool with the whole thing:
itunes
Anti-iTunes DRM Demonstration Brings Out The Haz Mat Nerds
By 6.12.06
We somehow missed news of this, but there was a nationwide protest at various Apple Stores on Friday, trying to educate people about the dangers of DRM. The primary danger being, of course, the fact that it’s bad for consumers because it locks you in to a single competitor… if you put your head in the microwave and then decide to switch from an iPod to a Creative Zen, you need to repurchase all your iTunes songs. Ironically enough, this protest was held the same day I decided to give my aged mother my old Dell DJ and invest in an iPod myself. Unfortunately, I went to Best Buy, so I didn’t run into any of the guys at the Boston Apple store; otherwise, we might have had some of that first-hand content Ben’s always telling me I should be trying to find.
Pith & Vinegar & Electricity
By 6.7.06
• Lil’ ‘lectrician kit at Amazon. They’re never to young to learn about sticking stuff in electrical sockets. [Amazon]
You Don’t Own Anything With DRM
By 5.15.06
One problem with DRM in general is that it is an industry concept that takes-as-read the consumerist fallacy that you don’t actually own things you buy, you just license them. Perhaps this is the natural evolution of consumerism now that products like media are, if not less tangible, at least a bit more ethereal. Still, DRM gives all the power to the companies… and companies prove time and time again that they can’t be trusted.
Bush’s iPod Houses “Illegal” Songs
By 4.17.06
The RIAA and the DRM Nazis could have a new target besides small families, single mothers and MIT students. How about the President of the United States? From BoingBoing:
More Free: Free iTunes Blog
By 3.15.06
Like we said earlier today, we absolutely love free. Complaints start when we start paying, when we enter a contract with a company and — time and time again, almost invariably — they forget about our contracts and start lumping us up in with the faceless aggregate. But there’s no lapsed service, no patronizing Customer Service exchanges when things are free — free is consumerist utopia.
All the Free iTunes Songs You Can Stuff in Your Pants
By 3.3.06
Get one free song from the iTunes store. Repeat over and over to stock up your library. Get on it now because who knows how long it will last.
Amazon to Build iPod & iTunes Killer?
By 2.17.06
Amazon.com announced plans to take on iTunes and iPod as early as this summer. It will launch its own Internet music service as well as sell its own branded portable music players.
iTunes Billionth Song Contest: Play for Free
By 2.8.06
Faithful reader Mr. Scolex writes:
Wanted to share a tip for you guys regarding the iTunes 1 billionth song download contest. Apple has made this deliberately confusing so I poured over the official rules to see what the skinny was.
Apple Adds iTunes Ministore Opt-In
By 1.18.06
not the software, just the Tuesday morning, new-music-has-dropped update.
Latest iTunes Dials Home Without Your Permission
By 1.11.06
We don’t mind it when software dials back home to its creator company—we mind when it does so without asking. Apparently the newest version of iTunes (6.0.2) includes a ‘Mini-Store’ pane which sends information about the current song you are listening to back to Apple (via a company called ‘Omniture’) so they can push suggested albums or songs based on your existing collection. Readers of Boing Boing have determined that turning off the Mini-Store does deactivate the behavior, but it’s something of which you should be aware.
