Monthly Archives: January 2009

Time for leftists to fix a longstanding misattribution

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Around this time of year or around Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, people cite King’s speeches. Most don’t cite “Beyond Vietnam” which sharply and rightly criticizes American foreign policy including calling the US “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”. As Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon point out, this speech wasn’t ignored in 1967. The speech was criticized. That criticism looks foolish today like anyone contending the Earth is flat. Unfortunately some of that criticism is wrongly attributed which I learned when I went to read the entire articles from which various people cite quotes.

Here’s the text of a letter I sent to Democracy Now!. Judging by how many leftist blogs, forums, and webpages of all kinds have apparently blindly repeated this error, the issue could just as well apply to them:

Since at least January 15, 2002 either Amy Goodman or Juan Gonzalez has introduced a replay of King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech and said, “Time magazine [later] called the speech ‘demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.'”.

You are probably referring to Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon’s article from 1995, “The Martin Luther King You Don’t See on TV” which features that line.

In the online version of that article Cohen and Solomon acknowledge that they misattributed a Life magazine quote to Time magazine (“Corrected version: An earlier version of this column mistakenly attributed a quote from Life to Time magazine.”).

You shouldn’t continue to repeat Cohen and Solomon’s error.

iTunes losing DRM is exception to the rule at Apple

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Apple says they’ll drop the DRM on all iTunes tracks. Other music distributors (some which sell the same tracks as iTunes) have already done this. Dropping DRM on iTunes tracks would be less onerous than the current arrangement where some iTunes tracks still have DRM. But how do DRM-free iTunes tracks compare with Magnatune? What does that mean for you as a music listener? Should you do business with organizations that treats you badly?

What is DRM?

DRM are technical schemes that are designed to restrict what computer users can do with their computers. The acronym “DRM” means different things depending on the frame of reference with which you approach these restrictions. When viewed from the perspective of the user, DRM focuses on what users are not allowed to do with the work. Hence, from the user’s perspective “DRM” means “digital restrictions management”. Publishers who seek to limit what users can do think of “DRM” as “digital rights management” because publishers don’t want you to think about restrictions are in place or their effect on the many users these restrictions are designed to disenfranchise.

There’s no limit to what can be restricted by DRM schemes (anymore than there’s a limit to the kinds of computer programs programmers can write or images artists can sketch on paper) and one is not better off to understand freedom-related issues like DRM in terms of specific restrictions. But to give a few examples, DRM schemes include methods of stopping people from running arbitrary programs, installing software on computers, playing media files, restricting seeking around in movies (say, to jump to a particular scene without first watching ads), preventing playing movies DVDs in certain DVD players, and reducing how you can use media (editing and sharing playlists, for example).

Without DRM, you could decide how many times you wanted to burn copies to physical media, make useful copies for yourself that you could play back later, skip around in the file without restriction when you play the file back, or play from any device capable of reading the file. Without DRM, there’s no danger that technological restrictions will be imposed on you later; the files will not become less playable later on. With DRM-free media there’s no need to invoke special programs do these things. Your purchases are truly yours to play as you wish anywhere at any time. With DRM, the publisher can limit all of these things and more depending only on how much effort they’re willing to put into implementing such restrictions.

So when we hear that Apple is dropping DRM on their iTunes tracks, we should put this in perspective not just for Apple users but anyone who enjoys any kind of media. We should better understand what the alternatives are so we don’t step into a well-advertised trap.
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