BoingBoing posted this spot-on attack on what Fred Amoroso, Macrovision's CEO, calls an open letter to Steve Jobs.

Cory says:

The CEO of Macrovision has sent an open letter to Steve Jobs telling him off for speaking out against DRM. Macrovision is a company that makes abusive DRMs (the system that stops you from hooking up your VCR and your DVD player in series, the system that stops your TiVo from recording "accidentally" crippled Fox shows, etc), that had the great good fortune to get its technology mandated under the DMCA. That meant that it could charge anything it wanted to the entertainment industry for its nonfunctional anti-video-user technology, and it proceeded to hose the living hell out of Hollywood

And then quotes from Amorosos's nonsense:

DRM increases not decreases consumer value – I believe that most piracy occurs because the technology available today has not yet been widely deployed to make DRM-protected legitimate content as easily accessible and convenient as unprotected illegitimate content is to consumers. The solution is to accelerate the deployment of convenient DRM-protected distribution channels—not to abandon them. Without a reasonable, consistent and transparent DRM we will only delay consumers in receiving premium content in the home, in the way they want it. For example, DRM is uniquely suitable for metering usage rights, so that consumers who don't want to own content, such as a movie, can "rent" it. Similarly, consumers who want to consume content on only a single device can pay less than those who want to use it across all of their entertainment areas – vacation homes, cars, different devices and remotely. Abandoning DRM now will unnecessarily doom all consumers to a "one size fits all" situation that will increase costs for many of them.

As Cory says, this is utter nonsense. I don't think even Amoroso actually believes this; the idea that protected media will be cheaper has never been true, and there's no reason to think it will be true in the future.

What he's saying, simply, is this freedom stuff threatens my wallet.

Go check out Cory's post. As usual, he gives brilliant rant.

It's re-posting other people's links day. This one's more serious though.

My brutha-man Ray posted about a video that Gordon Soderberg made about Iraq Veterans Against War and the rebuilding effort in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

It's pretty compelling, and the intro set to Can't Bomb The World into Peace by Michael Franti alone has a huge impact.

Gordon's page on the video is here.

Get out there and vote - get the fucking GOP out.

God, this is what we all need to be saying every time someone says 'terrorist' and 'terrorism'. It makes me want to fucking scream; They win when we panic. The fucking win when we panic.

Here's a snippet from a great piece on Bruce Schneier - go read the whole thing, it's worth it, but here's his key point.

Another thought experiment: Imagine for a moment that the British government arrested the 23 suspects without fanfare. Imagine that the TSA and its European counterparts didn't engage in pointless airline-security measures like banning liquids. And imagine that the press didn't write about it endlessly, and that the politicians didn't use the event to remind us all how scared we should be. If we'd reacted that way, then the terrorists would have truly failed.

It's time we calm down and fight terror with antiterror. This does not mean that we simply roll over and accept terrorism. There are things our government can and should do to fight terrorism, most of them involving intelligence and investigation -- and not focusing on specific plots.

But our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand together checking their watches. There are approximately 1 billion Muslims in the world, a large percentage of them not Arab, and about 320 million Arabs in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of them not terrorists. Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show's viewership.

It's this line that most speaks to me; "Our job is to think critically and rationally". And this isn't just something that is true in this context; this is something we all need to learn how to do, all the fucking time.

As usual, props to Cory at BoingBoing for pointing this out.

I'm sure you've heard about the shit-canned southpark episode where they take on those fuckin' freaks Tom Cruise and John Travolta and the Co$.

The episode can be found here at Contemporary Insanity. rm format only, no quicktime, alas.

And props again to Brandon for the logo. I just sized it, he did the work.