Cory Doctorow's latest posting in Information Week continues his long-term, reasoned, passionate assault on DRM for copy-protection. This week's target is Apple and iTunes, but in the article Doctorow also makes reference to some other failed DRM attempts, linking back to articles on his Boing Boing blog. I won't steal all his thunder, so I'll mention just one.This is the Motorola ROKR phone, which attempted to provide an iPod/mobile phone hybrid, and was killed by Apple's restrictions on the use of 'their' music. Boing Boing's take here: detailed post-mortem in Wired by Frank Rose here.
While we're at it, who decided that mobile phones weren't going to have standard headphone fittings? I appreciate that you also need a microphone connection and an override for music when the phone rings, but why not have a standard headphone jack as well as the high-tech plug-in earbuds? After all, headphones get a lot of use. They break. Surely it's not because that way you could buy new accessories at the local import shop for five bucks instead of going through the phone vendor for double figures?
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