The Canadian Music Creators Coalition is not impressed with the copyright reform bill announced this morning.  “As we feared, this bill represents an American-style approach to copyright.  It’s all locks and lawsuits,” said Safwan Javed, CMCC member and drummer for Wide Mouth Mason.

“Rather than building a made-in-Canada proposal to help musicians get paid, the government has chosen to import American-style legislation that says the solution to the music industry’s problems is suing our fans,” continued Javed.  “Suing fans won’t make it 1992 again.  It’s a new world for the music business and this is an old approach.”

(Read More)

Dear MSN Music customer,

On April 22, Microsoft notified you that as of August 31st, 2008, we would be changing the level of support for music purchased from MSN Music, and while your existing purchased music would continue to play, you would no longer be able to authorize new PCs and devices to play that music.

After careful consideration, Microsoft has decided to continue to support the authorization of new computers and devices and delivery of new license keys for MSN Music customers through at least the end of 2011, after which we will evaluate how much this functionality is still being used and what steps should be taken next to support our customers. This means you will continue to be able to listen to your purchased music and transfer your music to new PCs and devices beyond the previously announced August 31, 2008 date.

Microsoft continues to recommend that you back up your music on CD or hard drive along with other important data.

Sincerely,

MSN Music team

(Originally from BoingBoing)

A scratchy recording of Baa Baa Black Sheep and a truncated version of In the Mood are thought to be the oldest known recordings of computer generated music.

The songs were captured by the BBC in the Autumn of 1951 during a visit to the University of Manchester.

Those Brits, man, they know their music. Audio and video located here. This is of note because rather than vacuum tubes, it used Oompa-Loompas for all of the heavy lifting.

Not *real* tennis, not even tennis on television for that matter. Much more metaphorical (21 points, thank you). I wrote to my local Member of Parliament because a) All Canadians who enjoy fair-use should, b) it's free. They have since responded to my modified form letter with a form letter of their own.

Bastards are playing hardball, I see. Interested parties may hit READ MORE to read more. The rest of you are probably here for Skinnydevil's wonderful Guitar Gods interviews anyways.

I need not explain my views on Digital Rights Management, or as Richard Stallman calls it Digital Restrictions Management. I do, however, take some measure of pleasure in reading stories such as this one:

This can be triggered via using up your 3 activations and each time you change a piece of hardware, reformat your computer or install/upgrade a new operating system, it takes up one of the activations.

This is proven to be true by a guy over at the Mass Effect forums. He registered and started to play the game (Activation #1). Well, when he tried to play the game he had strange artifacts on his screen. Thinking it was an OS-related issue, he reinstalled XP and reinstalled the game (Activation #2). Finding out that it didn’t help the problem, he soon figured out it was his graphics card struggling. Well, he bought a brand new card and that solved the problem (this triggers Activation #3). Game ran fine for a short period of time (2 days) and he played thru it and completed the game. Well, a week after that, he decided he wanted to run thru the game again. This is where he stumbles upon this error:

“The game can not start. For security reasons, only a limited number of machines can ever be licensed by a single purchase. This limit has been reached. Please purchase another registration code, reinstall, and then try again."

I have had similar problems with DRM enabled software. I purchased Bioshock & Half Life 2 when they were first released. Due to the software wanting to register before I was allowed to play and due to the extreme popularity of both titles, the servers were swamped and I was unable to play either game for a day or two until the rush was over and I could finally get the software to connect. Some might see it as a minor issue, but it is things like that that show DRM is broken.

Also from the article:

If you are a Pirate:

• BAD: You do have the same bugs that those with legal copies have, plus new ones depending on how the cracked copy was programmed.
• GOOD: Unlimited Activations!
• GOOD: No SecuROM to deal with
• GOOD & BAD: It’s free, but illegal

If you are a Legal Customer:

• BAD: Limited to 3 Activations
• BAD: Your computer is plaqued with SecuROM
• BAD: Game contains errors and bugs
• GOOD & BAD: You support Maxis by purchasing the game, but you are also supporting EA, and if you support them, you support SecuROM

Honestly…what looks better to you?

Link.