DRM s*cks and so do software patents
Title says it all really. Tim does his usual great job of catching cool stuff and pointing out the absurdities of it.
From ongoing ; The DRM Debacle:
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Imagine that: by introducing DRM, Microsoft can lock out competing office software from opening its data files. Does that make you paranoid? It should.
ContentGuard In a lightly-reported story, Microsoft and Time Warner are jointly bidding to take over ContentGuard, a company that has some DRM products and a great big patent portfolio. ContentGuard has claimed that rights expression languages such as XACML necessarily infringe on their patents, and thus if you want to implement any such technology, you have to negotiate a license with them first.
If the patent claims hold up, there can’t ever be an Open-Source implementation of a rights language. Does that make you paranoid? It should.
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