Saturday saw anti-DRM protests at eight Apple stores across the USA organised by DefectiveByDesign, who are running an on-going ‘Campaign to Eliminate DRM.’
The protests took place between 10am and noon, where those involved got dressed up in brightly coloured HazMat (hazardous material) suits, stood outside the shops carrying placards and handing out leaflets.
They argue that it is unreasonable, among other things, that purchasers of music tracks on iTunes are not able to resell their music once they have finished with it – a right they previously had when they used to buy physical media.
Where as to most people DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, Defective By Design label it ‘Digital Restrictions Management.’ Their particular beef with Apple is that, because of the use of DRM, Apple are locking-in people who buy music tracks at the iTunes store.
It’s the first time we’ve heard to a flashmob being used for anything approaching useful.
Being online-types there’s loads of media to look at whether is be photos and a number of videos from Chicago and San Francisco.
List of Apple stores affected
Apple Store – 1 Stockton St, San Francisco, CA 94108
Apple Store – 679 N Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60611
Apple Store – 4702 NE University Village Pl, Seattle, WA 98105
Apple Store – 100 Cambridge Side Place, Cambridge, MA 02141
Apple Store – 767 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10153
Apple Store – 160 Walt Whitman Rd. Huntington Station, NY 11746h
Apple Store – 6121 West Park Blvd. Plano, TX 75093
Apple Store – 189 The Grove Drive Los Angeles, CA 90036
Purveyor of fluffy, family-friendly feature films, Walt Disney has become the latest Hollywood studio to offer movies for sale on the Internet, with a new service offering films via the CinemaNow online service. 
Instead, the movies can only be copied to a total of three other devices (including laptop PCs and handheld electronic devices) supporting CinemaNow’s copyright-protection technology. 
“We take that as a real nice vote of confidence,” he added, before trotting off to the litter tray. 
Dandruff shakers looking forward to some geriatric rocking with Guns’n’Roses at the Hammersmith Apollo tomorrow night can forget all about keeping their tickets as a memento after the show. 
Moreover, we don’t even like the idea of having tickets on our mobiles. What happens if your battery runs out, or if you delete your text message by accident? 
Regardless of what punters want, The Man is pressing ahead for a bright virtual ticket future, with O2 working with technology provider, Mobiqa to provide m-tickets to this month’s O2 Wireless Festival in London – and in their first week, they managed to shift a hefty £100,000 worth of the things. 
There’s been some deep rumblings of discontent from tens of thousands of customers trying to sign up to Carphone Warehouse’s offer of “free” broadband. 
The TalkTalk offer gives punters unlimited landline telephone calls and broadband access for £20 per month, with a one-off £29.99 connection fee. 
The Independent has reported that chatrooms have been “inundated” with punters venting their frustration over their attempts to sign up to the service, with the TalkTalk website offering a rueful apology on their website: 
In the normal world, if you’d just discovered that your business had lost £14.9bn ($27.9bn) in a single year, you’d be blubbering into your laptop or heading to the pub to down a vat of Old Scrote’s Badger ale. 
In the white-hot mobile phone segment, Vodafone continues to create growth in key markets such as Germany, Spain and the United States, despite being forced to scuttle out of Japan – selling the business for £8.9bn – after failing to make much of a mark in the country. 
A number of people that we know who have at one time or another had very serious eBay habits have, at one time or another have been ripped off on eBay. Some see it as a right of passage, one that makes you pay that little bit more attention the next time. 
When you realise this is the case you then get angry; contact eBay; they tell you about the scheme they have in place to provide financial recompense; you find out it’s actually not worth doing because the difference between what you paid and the admin charge makes it not worthwhile. You put it down to experience. 
This just in, Steven Carter, Chief Executive Officer of UK communication uber-regulator Ofcom will be standing down with effect from 15 October 2006. 
The next role for Carter has been the matter of some conjecture, nay gossip. Given Ofcom is seen by a lot of the world as a leader in communications regulation, there are many possible roles. Amoung those mentioned so far have been BSkyB, and with James Murdoch rumoured to be shifting upstairs the position may be open. Hey … how about the FCC? 
Crumblies all across the UK are being given the chance to try out the new fangled interwebby thing thanks to Age Concern’s ‘Silver Surfer Week.’ 
Silver Surfer Clubs
Frankie’s story
“Before I began the courses, I’d never even switched a computer on,” says Frank. “I’m now planning to create my own Website that my family and friends can visit to see my latest photographs and exchange messages. It’s a great way to share experiences and keep in touch.” 
Sony Ericsson has announced its first Walkman phone for Japan today and it looks like a beaut. 
True to its Walkman heritage, the slide-out phone has a smorgasbord of built-in dedicated music controls, including a natty new mechanical navigation wotsit bolted on to the bottom of the phone. 
There’s been no firm announcement of the retail price yet, although it’s hotly rumoured to be around the $180 mark, and no announcement of a UK release yet, natch. 
The Wireless Event took place on Wednesday and Thursday at Olympia in London, it’s an industry show that stands out for exhibitors trying to sell to other exhibitors – who probably outnumber visitors (well maybe a slight exaggeration). 
There were a lot of infrastructure companies trying to sell WiFi or WiMAX systems, some in the consumer space, but mainly for service providers. Of the mobile networks, only T-Mobile had a big stand, Orange had a small “business” services stand and O2 had a section of the Cloud’s stand. 
USR aka (US Robotics) have announced a USB handset that works with Skype. It’s really just a USB sound-device, but looks like a phone and has Skype integration (i.e. you can pull your contacts etc from Skype and they show in the phone’s display). They’ve also got a USB Skype conferencing device so several people sitting around a table can listen and speak on the call. Their ADSL/ADSL2+/Wireless routers are all now very simple to configure with wireless security turned on by default and basic ISP settings pre-configured. 
The Cloud were there with a HUGE O2 Exec (aka i-mate JASJAR), anyone using the Exec can log-in to the Cloud’s homepage through WiFi, hit the O2 logo, enter their mobile number and the user will be phoned back. If they enter the digit 1 they’ll be granted access (and billed to that number). 
Zyxel had a their normal range of wired/wireless and security products. The star of their stand was their keyfob wireless hotspot locator. It works with all modes of WiFi (i.e. 802.11a/b/g) and supports unsecured and secure networks (WEP, WPA etc) showing what networks are available (at least 9 were available around the Zyxel stand).