DigitalPiracy
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How a file format brought an industry to its knees
MP3. It's the format that revolutionized the way music's been consumed since the late '90s. When Karlheinz Brandenburg, a German acoustics engineer, discovered that an audio file could be compressed down to one-twelfth of its original size without distortion, he created the file-shrinking technology. Stephen Witt's debut book, How Music Got Free, traces all digital music piracy back to the invention of that format, which inadvertently made it possible for people to download and share music illegally. The book details the science and struggle behind the widely used audio technology. And his investigation uncovers the politics and the manipulative men who kept MP3 files from seeing the light of computer screens for years.
MPAA backs yet another anti-piracy technology: DreamStream
As the Motion Picture Association of America continues on its unending (we mean that quite literally) quest to banish digital piracy, it has just announced its unbridled support for yet another technology. The MPAA has approved the use of DreamStream's secure online file streaming system "as a solution to curb digital piracy," and according to Michael Jay Solomon, founder of Solomon Entertainment Enterprises, the software will "allow the content providers to recoup the billions of dollars that they are loosing [sic] right now." If you got a chuckle out of that, get a load of this. Ulf Diebel, chief development officer for DreamStream, went so far as to say that in order to "win the war on piracy, the studios need DreamStream's military grade capabilities." Heck, the company even asserts that its "unpublished encryption has never been compromised by hackers or digital pirates." Sheesh , don't you all know what happens when you just beg to be circumvented?
