While the RIAA has objected to a tool for downloading online videos, EFF senior activist Elliot Harmon responds with this question. “Who died and put them in charge of YouTube?” He asks the question in a new video “explainer” on the controversy, and argues in a new piece at EFF.org that the youtube-dl tool “doesn’t infringe on any RIAA copyrights.” RIAA’s…
Tag: DRM
Cory Doctorow Crowdfunds His New Audiobook to Protest Amazon/Audible DRM
Science fiction writer Cory Doctorow (also a former EFF staffer and activist) explains why he’s crowdfunding his new audiobook online. Despite the large publishers for his print editions, “I can’t get anyone to do my audiobooks. Amazon and its subsidiary Audible, which controls 90% of the audiobook sales, won’t carry any of my audiobooks because I won’t let them put any…
Archivists Want Broader DMCA Exemption for ‘Abandoned’ Online Games
Several organizations have asked the Copyright Office to renew the exemption to the DMCA’s DRM circumvention restrictions. This would allow, they argued, abandoned online games to be preserved for future generations. In addition, the Software Preservation Network and the Library Copyright Alliance have asked for an expansion to allow these games to be made available more broadly.
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Pandemic Sends Videogame Museum Into Two-Year Shutdown
Oakland’s nonprofit “Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment” housed 40,000 historic pieces of videogame memorabilia — including 11,000 playable games. In 2017 they were the ones urging America’s copyright office to allow museums and libraries to circumvent DRM to preserve abandoned online games like FIFA World Cup, Nascar and The Sims. The museum’s sponsors include GitHub, Google, PlayStation, and Dolby Digital….
You Can Now Play an Ultra-Rare Quake Arcade Cabinet at Home
Since its 1996 PC release, id’s seminal shooter Quake has been ported to everything from flip phones and smartphones to game consoles and Web browsers. But even many serious fans of the series don’t know about Quake Arcade Tournament Edition (Quake ATE), an officially licensed version of the game that ran on custom arcade cabinets. From a report: Even among those…
Microsoft’s New KDP Tech Blocks Malware By Making Parts of the Windows Kernel Read-Only
Microsoft today published technical details about a new security feature that will soon be part of Windows 10. From a report: Named Kernel Data Protection (KDP), Microsoft says this feature will block malware or malicious threat actors from modifying (corrupting) the operating system’s memory. According to Microsoft, KDP works by giving developers access to programmatic APIs that will allow them to…
FSF-Approved Hyperbola GNU/Linux Forking OpenBSD, Citing ‘User Freedom’ Concerns
Long-time Slashdot reader twocows writes: Hyperbola GNU/Linux, a FSF-approved distribution of GNU/Linux, has declared their intent to fork OpenBSD and become HyperbolaBSD…” The news came earlier this week in a roadmap announcement promising “a completely new OS derived from several BSD implementations” (though Hyperbola was originally based on Arch snapshots and Debian development). “This was not an easy decision to make,…
Ask Slashdot: What Will the 2020s Bring Us?
dryriver writes: The 2010s were not necessarily the greatest decade to live through. AAA computer games were not only DRM’d and internet tethered to death but became increasingly formulaic and pay-to-win driven, and poor quality console ports pissed off PC gamers. Forced software subscriptions for major software products you could previously buy became a thing. Personal privacy went out the window…
Linux Users Can Now Use Disney+ After DRM Fix
“Linux users can now stream shows and movies from the Disney+ streaming service after Disney lowered the level of their DRM requirements,” reports Bleeping Computer: When Disney+ was first launched, Linux users who attempted to watch shows and movies were shown an error stating “Something went wrong. Please try again. If the problem persists, visit the Disney+ Help Center (Error Code…
The Curse of Outdated DRM Claims Another Vicim, ‘Tron: Evolution’
As of this week, players who owned a legitimate copy of Tron: Evolution they paid for but never played it, no longer can. From a report: Tron: Evolution, a tie-in game for the 2010 Tron: Legacy film, used SecurRom, a form of digital rights management (DRM), and publisher Disney hasn’t paid its bill. This means Disney can no longer authenticate purchases…