Layer Eight Blog

Speaking of open video, I found this link courtesy of Slashdot posters here.

In it, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) published its open letter to Google beckoning them to release to the public their newly-acquired video formats which are still available only under license.  Freeing it up would enable all to use the video format as they wish and it would make unified many more videos and applications worldwide.

Hopefully, Google will listen and deliver – they own the biggest portion of the Internet so far (including YouTube), and this move would help make the web an open place for all in the future.

As a technology solutions provider, I often read journals, magazines, and books to learn what other adademic, commercial, governmental, and non-profits are doing with technology.  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been putting out a civilian version of their magazine “Technology Review” for years, and I have been reading since 1998.  There are authors that have written articles since I first began reading incluing David Talbot – who wrote an article in the October 2009 issue (online here) regarding Internet video formats and where he senses us heading.  The article includes a short history of videos on the web along with comparisons of sites like YouTube, Hulu, and Wikipedia, all of which post video content on the web.

In addition to introducing the various formats of videos to be streamed, Talbot identifies many problems we all face in viewing videos on the web – there is no one format or a universal way we may view this films and shorts.  The most popular formats are Adobe’s Flash (FLV), Moving Pictures Experts Group Four (MPEG-4 or MP4), Apple’s Quicktime (QT), and Microsoft’s Windows Media Video (WMV).  Each one of these formats requires its own player, although many players include plugins or conversion tools allowing people to watch other formats with their chosen player.

The article introduced Miro – a free and open-source video player produced by a non-profit organization whose mission is to make the Internet media fully accessible and universal.  The player offers HD format support in addition to downloading features so a user can access their favorite television shows, videos and movies.  Since the player downloads the movies and shorts, they may be watched while the computer is not connected to the Internet – great for traveling.

Miro’s website is:  http://www.getmiro.com

From $4 – $40 a month, one can contribute to the non-profit to “adopt a line of Miro [source] code” – the aim being contributions can help keep the player up-to-date, introduce new features, and help make it the most popular media player to help make the Internet accessible by open source means.

I will be producing a few virtual machines, installing the Miro player, and reporting on it in the days to come.

If you have ever downloaded a song, opened a movie file, used Netflix’s online movie-watching software, or have an MP3 player, you have most likely experienced Digital Rights Management (DRM) in one form or another.  DRM attempts to control how files are used, converted, or even copied (if that is even allowed) on hardware and software systems.

Because of those restrictions, proposals for ensuring people can freely use their (sometimes paid-for) content have been being created and reviewed.  The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is now considering a new type of management of copy-written materials called Digital Personal Property (DPP), which could allow for users to have more freedom from the current DRM-driven methods.

Many devices must be connected to the Internet when being updated with new media, and DPP may remove that requirement.  Nate Anderson wrote an article for the site Ars Technica explaining the new proposal.  The new standard would allow people to “unlock” content to sell a device or back up the media, but not allow them to copy the key (called a playkey in the new standard) from one device to another.  By making the playkey the unlocking mechanism, people are released from having to constantly tie-in to the Internet in order to use the device or software.

The onus to protect the content from being used by another is also now on the consumer to protect the key – without it, he/she would not be able to see their favorite movies or listen to their favorite songs.  This takes the burden of rights restrictions off of the manufacturers of hardware, and lets them focus on delivering better content and features.

While I think the new standard sounds good, I believe the prevention of copying the playkey will prove difficult.  No matter what the standard, something must be done about the current ways with which companies restrict use of their hardware and software.

Richard Stallman’s Free Software Foundation had started a campaign called “Defective by Design” (defectivebydesign.org), which seeks improvement of users’ rights with hardware and software.  I will be keeping an eye out in the days to come to see if they put out a statement regarding the proposed IEEE standard, but have found nothing on it as of this writing.

I recently discovered the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse website where they describe different ways information is or is not privatized.  The producers of that website also include links to help people increase their privacy with samples of letters to write to the various collectors of private information, hyperlinks to other sites and blogs useful for taking control of your own privacy, and pages dedicated to the many different categories of private information we all have.

Layer Eight Communications (L8C) is starting a blog about many technologies:  announcements, security, implementations, impacts, and analysis.