COPYCENSE

“When it was announced over a year ago that The Complete New Yorker: Eighty Years of the Nation’s Greatest Magazine would be released on eight DVDs, I immediately put in my pre-order. After it arrived, I took out the first DVD and stuck it in my Linux box, expecting that I could start looking at the collected issues.

“No dice. The issues were available as DjVu files. No problem; there are DjVu readers for Linux, and it’s an open format. Even worse, if you do install the software, and then perform a search using the somewhat klunky search tool built in to the proprietary DjVu reader, you’ll soon find yourself in DVD-swapping hell as you jump from issue to issue.

“I finally got so frustrated that I decided to break through The New Yorker’s limitations and DRM, both to access the content I wanted to use and to prove to myself that it could be done. It took a while, but it worked.”

Scott Granneman. The Big DRM Mistake. Security Focus. March 1, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.