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Sony Commentaries

With the Sony rootkit story continuing to make news, there has been a raft of important commentary on the incident. Two of note from today – the New York Times runs an op-ed from Damian Kulash, lead singer of the group OK Go.  Kulash speaks out against DRM (noting the band's good fortune that EMI declined to use DRM with its most recent release) and acknowleding the value of file sharing.  Kulash concludes:

"Before a million people can buy our record, a million people have to hear our music and like it enough to go looking for it. That won't happen without a lot of people playing us for their friends, which, in turn, won't happen without a fair amount of file sharing.

As it happened, for a variety of reasons, our label didn't put copy-protection software on our album. What a shame, though, that so many bands aren't as fortunate."

Meanwhile, Professor Greg Hagen from the University of Calgary has an excellent piece on Blog*on*Nymity.  Hagen calls on policy makers to rethink Bill C-60, arguing that further protections from DRM are needed and raising the prospect that without such protections the legislation may be unconstitutional. 

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