Friday, May 11, 2007

DRM lawsuits just get dopier and dopier

DRM extremists continue to push the boundaries of surreality. Apparently drm vendors, Media Rights Technologies (MRT) and BlueBeat.com, have sent cease and desist letters to Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and RealNetworks, which declare that the compaines are in breach of the DMCA for not buying MRT and Bluebeat DRM!

They claim their drm is effective, so anyone who doesn't use it is selling products which could be used to circumvent copy protection devices. On that theory a scrapyard crushing machine could be used to crunch computers up such that they would be unable to circumvent copy protection technologies. So anyone selling computer hardware or software who doesn't tie the sale to the sale of a crushing machine, which automatically destroys the computer as soon as you get it home, is liable under the DMCA. We could sell the economy sledge hammer variety for the bargain hunting punter, with the prominently displayed warning that it would involved significantly higer personal input and effort on the part of the customer to achieve the same result of disabling the circumvention potential of the computer... hey the marker possibilities are endless...

Update from Ed Felten: apparently the company involved in this lawsuit was selling drm snake oil under a different name four years ago. And if you are prepared to take them seriously Ed has a bridge he's like to sell you, which he gives assurances that you are legally compelled to buy...

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