An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The classic PC games market is "in a sorry state," according to DRM-free and classic-minded storefront GOG. Small games that aren't currently selling get abandoned, and compatibility issues arise as technology moves forward or as one-off development ideas age like milk. Classic games are only 20 percent of GOG's catalog, and the firm hasn't actually called itself "Good Old Games" in 12 years. And yet, today, GOG announces that it is making "a significant commitment of resources" toward a new GOG Preservation Program. It starts with 100 games for which GOG's own developers are working to create current and future compatibility, keeping them DRM-free and giving them ongoing tech support, along with granting them a "Good Old Game: Preserved by GOG" stamp. GOG is not shifting its mission of providing a DRM-free alternative to Steam, Epic, and other PC storefronts, at least not entirely. But it is demonstrably excited about a new focus that ties back to its original name, inspired in some part by its work on Alpha Protocol. "We think we can significantly impact the classics industry by focusing our resources on it and creating superior products," writes Arthur Dejardin, head of sales and marketing at GOG. "If we wanted to spread the DRM-free gospel by focusing on getting new AAA games on GOG instead, we would make little progress with the same amount of effort and money (we've been trying various versions of that for the last 5 years)." What kind of games? Scanning the list of Good Old Games, most of them are, by all accounts, both good and old. Personally, I'm glad to see the Jagged Alliance games, System Shock 2, Warcraft I & II, Dungeon Keeper Gold and Theme Park, SimCity 3000 Unlimited, and the Wing Commander series (particularly, personally, Privateer). Most of them are, understandably, Windows-only, though Mac support extends to 34 titles so far, and Linux may pick up many more through Proton compatibility, beyond the 19 native titles to date. [...] [I]f you see the shiny foil-ish GOG badge on a game, it's an assurance that GOG has done all it can to bring forward a classic title. It's important work, too. "Preserving" games doesn't just mean locking a stable media in a vault, but keeping games accessible, and playable.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

GOG still puts up new DRM-free titles, but it sees opportunities in oldies.

Digital rights management is coming back to the enterprise in a big way, as long as there are no utility issues that could come in the way.

Old-school Apple fans probably remember a time, just before the iPhone became a massive gaming platform in its own right, when Apple released a wide range of games designed for late-model clickwheel iPods. While those clickwheel-controlled titles didn’t exactly set the gaming world on fire, they represent an important historical stepping stone in Apple’s long journey through the game industry. Today, though, these clickwheel iPod games are on the verge of becoming lost media—impossible to buy or redownload from iTunes and protected on existing devices by incredibly strong Apple DRM. Now, the classic iPod community is engaged in a quest to preserve these games in a way that will let enthusiasts enjoy these titles on real hardware for years to come. ↫ Kyle Orland at Ars Technica A nice effort, of course, and I’m glad someone is putting time and energy into preserving these games and making them accessible to a wider audience. As is usual with Apple, these small games were heavily encumbered with DRM, being locked to both the the original iTunes account that bought them, but also to the specific hardware identifier of the iPod they were initially synchronised to using iTunes. A clever way around this DRM exists, and it involves collectors and enthusiasts creating reauthorising their iTunes accounts to the same iTunes installation, and thus adding their respective iPod games to that single iTunes installation. Any other iPods can then be synced to that master account. The iPod Clickwheel Games Preservation Project takes this approach to the next level, by setting up a Windows virtual machine with iTunes installed in it, which can then be shared freely around the web for people to the games to their collection. This is a rather remarkably clever method of ensuring these games remain accessible, but obviously does require knowledge of setting up Qemu and USB passthrough. I personally never owned an iPod – I was a MiniDisc fanatic until my Android phone took over the role of music player – so I also had no clue these games even existed. I assume most of them weren’t exactly great to control with the limited input method of the iPod, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be huge numbers of people who have fond memories of playing these games when they were younger – and thus, they are worth preserving. We can only hope that one day, someone will create a virtual machine that can run the actual iPod operating system, called Pixo OS.

Last week when I was testing the latest version of RootkitRevealer (RKR) I ran a scan on one of my systems and was shocked to see evidence of a rootkit. Qiute by RootKit.com

Imagine you buy a Sony or BMG Audio CD. You agree with the EULA, then your system got hack by Sony.

About the DRM software from Sony that used rootkit technologies. The company behind the technology, First 4 Internet, has now released an update for the software. After visiting the web site, downloading and installing the update, it now seems that the DRM software no longer attempts to hide anything on the computer. The rootkit driver (aries.sys) is removed from the system during the update.

I dont think i will buy any Sony & BMG CDs or even PSP!!

Is it possible to "convert" DRM protected WMA files? Technically, no. It is illegal to circumvent Microsoft's protection in order to convert WMA files protected with Digital Rights Management (DRM). However, there are many legitimate reasons for wanting to convert these protected files, and many feel they should be able to do so. Blaze Media Pro provides a solution. Follow this link to find out how.

The YouTube Music app is the ultimate one to get drawn in the melodious magic. The new TuneFab YouTube Music Converter has opened an ocean of opportunities with futuristic features & fabulous functions.

BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- Tuesday, November 28, 2023 -- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has announced its Defective by Design campaign's 17th annual International Day Against DRM (IDAD). It will protest uses of Digital Restrictions Management technology's hold over public libraries around the world, exemplified by corporations like OverDrive and Follett Destiny. IDAD will take place digitally and worldwide on December 8, 2023.

Service model and architecture of downloadable mobile multi-CA/DRM solutions for delivering CA/DRM client software to secondary devices

Dozens of previously hard-to-access games can now be synced via Virtual Machine.

Usually, updates for premium priced ports on mobile are good to have for optimization or compatibility reasons, but Capcom’s newest …

Continue reading "Capcom Updates ‘Resident Evil 4', ‘Resident Evil Village’, and ‘Resident Evil 7’ on iOS With Online DRM"

Ondesoft Software offers giveaway of Ondesoft Audio Recorder and a 50% discount on iTunes DRM Audio/Video Converter for both Mac and Windows during 2017 Halloween season.

Karen and Bradley discuss the end to Microsoft's e-book platform and generally the dangers and disasters that Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) cause for software users and developers.

Show Notes:

Karen and Bradley discuss the end to Microsoft's e-book platform and generally the dangers and disasters that Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) cause for software users and developers.

Segment 0 (00:35)

• Bradley mentioned that Microsoft ended their e-book platform. He said this was “last month” but we ended up releasing this show late, so it was in August 2019 (01:31).
• Bradley mentioned the analog hole. (09:50)
• Karen discussed the exception process under DMCA, which Conservancy participated in regarding “Smart” TVs. (12:30)
• Bradley mentioned this historical burning of the Library of Alexandria as a Roman weapon, comparing it to DRM. (15:07)
• Bradley talked about how Netflix and Microsoft used Silverlight initially as the method of DRM, and that Microsoft was a leader in the entertainment industry in providing DRM (20:00)

Segment 1 (26:31)

• Bradley and Karen discuss how DRM and other lock-down of devices, including medical devices, are creating problems in society generally.
• Karen noted that the role of for-profit companies is not to safeguard the public interest. (41:10)
• Bradley mentioned you can turn off DRM on the Google Play store for your book (as the publisher). (43:04)

Send feedback and comments on the cast to <oggcast@faif.us>. You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and by following Conservancy on on Twitter and and FaiF on Twitter.

Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch of danlynch.org. Theme music written and performed by Mike Tarantino with Charlie Paxson on drums.

The content of this audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).

SAVE THE DATE ESADE Business School will host the 2020 Behavioral Decision Research and Management (BDRM) conference, in Barcelona, Spain. Dates: Tuesday June 16th – Thursday June 18th, 2020. More information coming, September of 2019. Faculty Organizers Uri Simonsohn (ESADE) Isabelle Engeler (IESE) Jordi Quoidbach (ESADE) Bart de Langhe (ESADE) Johannes Müller-Trede (IESE) Ioannis Evangelidis […]

The post Behavioral Decision Research and Management (BDRM), Barcelona, June 16-18, 2020 appeared first on Decision Science News.

Digital rights management is coming back to the enterprise in a big way, as long as there are no utility issues that could come in the way.

IEEE / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Incorporated

IEEE / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Incorporated

IEEE / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Incorporated