Copyrights, Copywrongs

It may just be that I've been spending too much time reading Larry Lessig's books (and even meeting the man himself - of which more anon), but copyright issues really seem to be getting seriously central these days.

First, there was the action against the BitTorrent search engine The Pirate Bay. If they think they need to take out The Pirate Bay, then Google, Yahoo and MSN will have to be next on the list. There was also quite a bit of reaction.

Now there's some promising noises from the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group, who have noticed that there's a lot of nasty DRM stuff floating around these days - and that most punters aren't even aware of it. It's true that they're hardly advocating ripping it all out, but making people aware of DRM and what it does is an important first step, as Larry has already shown us.

Update 1: Whoops, forgot about AllofMP3.com, as this fine piece reminds me. Love the title: Global File-Sharing Whack-A-Mole.

Update 2: Having actually read the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group report (maybe I should have done this earlier...) I must point out one particular recommendation:

#135 We recommend that the government do NOT legislate to make DRM systems mandatory.

which is indicative of the fair and intelligent stance taken by the report.