Daily Archive for January 28th, 2007

Join DRM Elimination Crew Now!

Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) is a technology that affects all users of computers, media players, mobile phones and other devices.

“‘Your devices don’t trust you!’ is the basic message of DRM. In fact they trust you so little that they will not even tell you that they put you under surveillance,” says Joachim Jakobs, FSFE’s media coordinator. [1]

УIf consumers even know there’s a DRM, what it is, and how it works, we’ve already failed,Ф says Peter Lee, an executive at Disney. [2]

“DRM technologies are based on the principle that a third party has more influence over your devices than you, and that their interests will override yours when they come in conflict. That is even true where your interest is perfectly legitimate and legal, and possibly also for your own data,” explains Georg Greve, FSFE’s president. [3]

“the problem with restriction systems is that they require your computer to be under control of somebody other than you. In order to implement it up at layer seven, something that they want to achieve, we could argue what they are trying to achieve at layer seven is a good thing or a bad thing or it should be allowed or it shouldn’t be allowed. My problem is that if they are gonna lock you down way back down layer zero inside the kernel inorder to achieve an effect at layer seven, you know what they are going to accomplish, a zillion unintented consequences or at any rate irrelevant consequences.” – Eben Moglen, professor of law and history of law at Columbia University, serves pro bono as General Counsel for the Free Software Foundation, and is the Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center
[4]

Sign up for the campaign here

http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-DRM-Campaign

This campaign is an effort to bring awareness about DRM to Indian consumers and involve them in discussions that affect them.

Free Your Phone

“The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave
themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are
indistinguishable from it.”

Mark Weiser wrote those words almost 15 years ago in a Scientific
American article titled, “The Computer for the 21st Century.” In it, he
coined the term “ubiquitous computing”, and proposed a set of ground
rules for devices of the 21st century.

Temporally, we’re here. Technologically, we’re close. But everyone
still seems to be talking about ubiquitous computing like a mirage on
desert road: it’s always the same distance away. Sometimes looking at
common every day objects with a fresh perspective yields interesting
new ideas. Today we’re going to propose that the foundation for
ubiquitous computing is already here. All that is stopping us from
going forward is change of context.


Read the full announcement

* http://openmoko.org/ — for the actual development community
* http://wiki.openmoko.org/ — for an official wiki of the project
* http://bugzilla.openmoko.org/ — for bug tracking
* http://lists.openmoko.org/ — for public mailing lists
* http://planet.openmoko.org/ — for an aggregated feed
* http://projects.openmoko.org/ — for user-contributed projects
* http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=26367538 – Orkut Community