Yesterday, Ken Fisher wrote an excellent piece on Hollywood’s true motives behind DRM. I saw a link to the article on Digg, thanks Kevin Rose.

Ken hits the nail squarely on the noggin in his piece. All the DRM we’re currently enduring, and worse, yet to come, is not about pounding a stake into the heart of piracy. Pirates will always be around. Eh? What about all of this stuff with HDMI and HDCP controlling what content can and can’t be displayed? There are plenty of HDMI devices out there that support, but do not honor HDCP restrictions, for instance. These devices are already in the wild, how will the MPAA & friends stop them? Answer: they can’t.

DRM, as Ken points out, is 100% about you, the consumer. With the DMCA, it’s illegal for you to enjoy fair-use rights that you’ve enjoyed for years. Take that Pirates of the Caribbean DVD you bought. You want to watch that on your iPod? Buy it again, sucker. Oh, you believed them when you saw that commercial for the DVD that said, “Own it today!”??? You know what you own? A plastic case, and the DVD media, not what’s on the DVD. According to the letter of the law, it’s actually illegal for you to invite friends over to watch a movie, since that constitutes a showing of the DVD. Our pals across the pond in the UK can’t legally rip a CD into iTunes either. In short, DRM gives the content provider all of the “rights”. DRM should really stand for “Digital give up all your Rights Management.”

Curiously enough, the VCR was going to destroy the entertainment industry. Funny how that never happened. Also funny is how the studios manage to stay in business with such staggering losses, all due to DVD piracy.

It’s madness I tell you. Just plain madness.

Rise up, don’t buy the lie. Don’t put money in the pockets of greedy individuals. I’m not advocating law-breaking, merely not patronizing a pox on humanity.

Currently playing in iTunes: Crazy by Gnarls Barkley

How appropriate, eh?

I was clearing out my Gmail spam folder this evening when I saw this ad:

A Blonde goes to the Post Office to buy stamps for her Christmas Cards.

She says to the clerk, “May I have 50 Christmas Stamps”.

The clerk says, “What denomination?”

The Blonde then says,

“God help us Has it come to this. Give me 6 Catholic, 12 Methodist, 10 Lutheran and 22 Presbyterian.”

That was in this morning’s email. Thanks Lori.

The Modssl howto is gone.

Folks, it’s almost 2007. I can’t think of a single Linux distribution that doesn’t ship with an SSL-enabled web server. Use the one that came with your distribution. If your needs are so specific that you need to build your own, you probably already know what to do.