Keynote: Hollywood’s Secret War on Your NOC
Cory Doctorow, co-editor of Boing Boing, had some interesting points during this morning’s keynote at LISA this morning. His message was that we are once again starting to lose the battle that we were winning in the ’80s with our right to own what we purchase. Companies such as Sony, with their “root kit on a audio CD” and the FCC with the broadcast flag, or even Apple and their DRM-crippled iPod, are treating their customers, and ultimately owners of this equipment as criminals. Real criminals, at least by a small stretch of the imagination, that download material from sharing sites such as Kazaa, Bittorrent, or eMule, have far more control over their illegal downloads than legitimate customers.
Cory went on to make the point that even “click to agree” clauses, often known as End User Agreements, have become deceptive and almost impossible to get out of. Simply by having a laptop delivered to you, in the case of Lovato, is enough for you to “agree” to terms that are not only stated in a lengthy agreement, but any future terms they might want to define.
The keynote did carry a positive message, even on top of all of this denial of our freedom to simply own what we pay money for, saying that big companies are starting to wise up against this, and are joining customer advocates such as the EFF. AT&T, for example, is being sued by the EFF because of wire tapping ($150 per customer per day that was tapped), has joined in with other companies like Sony against anti-consumer companies such as the MPAA.
On a different note, overheard on the way out of the keynote:
“…oh, I was in the back of the room for power. I fell asleep while coding drunk, and ran down my battery last night.”