this post, if I had such a thing, would be a modified version of the famous Devo song Whip It called ” of course ” Rip It) Technorati Tags: bill+gates, copyright, DRM, Microsoft [IMG] [IMG] [IMG] [IMG] [IMG] [IMG] [IMG] [IMG] Original post by Mathew Ingram: mathewingram.com/work

Putting aside issues of hacking DRM, I assume our American friends, at least those not in the paid employ of the RIAA or otherwise associated with Satan, would say that ripping for purposes of personal place-time-mode shifting is fair use. Of course, the Dark Lord and his minions would see it differently. But don’t they always?

:)

Original post: Bill Gates told me to just rip it by at Google Blog Search: it com

Bill Gates, a room full of Macbooks, and DRMMathew Ingram / mathewingram.com/work: Bill Gates told me to just rip it

[…] Todd Bishop has this: Fourteeen influential bloggers spent time meeting with people from Microsoft in Redmond on Wednesday, concluding with an hour-long session with Bill Gates … asking Gates whether Microsoft played a behind-the-scenes financial role in support of the SCO Group’s Linux-related litigation … Steve Ballmer’s recent claims about intellectual property violations in Linux … "What’s on your Zune?" Steve Rubel was there: It’s a rush once the world’s richest man and one of the most influential people in business and world affairs sits right down across a table from you. A bunch of us were overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the moment. I have never met a President of the United States but this sure felt like it for me … He opened up with a brief rundown of where he feels Microsoft is today. He was bullish about Microsoft’s big launches in 2007. He said that the company likes to roll out a super strong product then see how it connects to other things. … also talked about his transition to becoming a full-time philanthropist. Most product reviews will transition to Ray Ozzie, with other initiatives falling under Craig Mundie … Q) What’s on your Zune? (This was my question) All of the U2 stuff plus a lot more musicals than you might expect - for example, Wicked. As was Liz Gannes: He hinted at partnerships with car companies to be announced at CES and mused at the vast difference in business models — small, private sales to the military versus advertising — that have been applied to the data Microsoft uses for Virtual Earth … I asked which applications he forecast to live within the browser and which outside of it. He replied that the distinction would come to be silly from a technical standpoint, but that the necessary movement toward web APIs does present challenges on the business side. An exhausted Chris Pirillo was allowed out of the house: I asked Mr. Gates what he wanted to be when he grew up … Bill responded: "A lawyer. I admired the work that (my father) did. When I got enthralled with math, I thought I would go into mathematics. Then computers came along." Ryan Stewart called the day, "Surreal": We got to look at a lot of cool products today … WPF/E … is going to support managed code cross platform in addition to Javascript — I hadn’t realized this but it’s big news for .NET developers … The weakness of Microsoft has become the fact that it is trying to do battle on 500 different fronts. However the strength of Microsoft is that it’s doing battle on 500 different fronts. Kelly Goto not considered harmful: Today I asked Bill Gates, “What’s on your Christmas list?” and he answered: “I’m a pretty hard guy to shop for.” … I asked him what his thoughts were on the $100 laptop … “For rich people to supply laptops to the poor seems like it’s addressing the wrong problem … Our solution is to put PC’s into every library.” Michael Arrington notes a surprising Gatesian slip: I asked [about] the long term viability of DRM. I don’t hide the fact that I think DRM isn’t workable … Gates didn’t get into what could replace DRM, but he did give some reasonably candid insights suggesting that he thinks DRM is as lame as the rest of us. Gates said that no one is satisfied with the current state of DRM … says no one has done it right, yet. There are “huge problems” … His short term advice: “People should just buy a cd and rip it. You are legal then.” … Highlights of the day included … seeing the look on Gates’ face when he walked into the room and every single one of us had a Mac open on the desk in front of us Mathew Ingram comments: Of course, you aren’t really [legal] — at least not in every jurisdiction. Canada has a private copying levy that allows you to make copies for personal use (and Britain is considering one) but other countries don’t. In any case, Bill’s point about DRM being too complicated and not easy enough to use is a good one. In many cases, of course, it is also an attempt to turn back the clock and prevent you from using music you have purchased in ways you could before digital music existed, and that is probably my biggest beef with it. Molly E. Holzschlag questions Bill’s commitment to Web standards: I hope you’ll find … my five minutes of Web standards banter with Bill Gates … as intriguing, charmingly stubborn and witty as Mr. Gates himself. Niall Kennedy asked about SCO: Gates claimed he had never heard of BayStar Capital, an investor in SCO Group and their litigation against large corporate supporters of Linux. According to recent court documents BayStar founder and managing member Larry Goldfarb claims Microsoft wished to promote SCO Group through independent investors such as Baystar, backing a $50 million investment with supposed guarantees from Microsoft. … I asked Gates about the new interest in patent swaps with open source operating systems. Gates claimed patent cross-licensing is common practice in the software industry, protecting companies who indemnify their users from software risks. Which brings us back to D’oh! Todd Bishop: The bloggers who spent an hour with Bill Gates yesterday are taking a little heat today for not asking tougher questions … In defense of the bloggers, I can say from experience that coming up with good questions for the Microsoft chairman isn’t easy. It isn’t enough for the questions to be tough, concise, relevant and interesting. They also need to bring out informative, original responses from someone who has been asked thousands upon thousands of questions over the past three decades. … If there’s ever another session like the one held at Microsoft on Wednesday, the bloggers might want to consider working with each other — and their respective readers — to collectively generate a list of top questions beforehand. At the same time, it would be best to do it in such a way that Gates and others from Microsoft wouldn’t see the questions in advance. [Yeah, and perhaps Microsoft would like to invite your humble blogwatcher, too] […]

While it is perfectly legal for you to “rip it” in Canada, including if there is “DRM” on the CD, there is considerable pressure from the US government (Via the USTR, USPTO and the US embassy) and other foreign entities (CRIA is only Canadian in that it lobbies in Canada, but is controlled by the 4 transnational major labels) to change Canadian law on this.

It might be useful to let people know about two petitions we have to the Canadian government to try to raise awareness within politicians and policy makers about the real harmful consequences of legalizing and legal protection of what some call “DRM”.

Petition to protect Information Technology property rights
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/petition/ict/

[…] Bill Gates told me to just rip it […]

Thanks, Russell. I think you just did :-)

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[…] Gates Fields Bloggers’ Questions By: Mathew Ingram 2006-12-15 Bill Gates, co-founder and chairman of Microsoft and the worlds richest man, met with a bunch of technology bloggers yesterday. Everyone got to ask one question and there was some general discussion for about an hour with what some described as a very relaxed Gates. Some of the questions - like Mike’s question about DRM, which I wrote about here, and Liz Gannes’ excellent question about the future of web-based applications - were fairly hard-hitting, but others well, not so much. Like Steve Rubel’s question: “What’s on your Zune?” (This wasn’t the only softball, of course; there was also a question about what Bill has on his Christmas list). Trevor Cook, who writes at a blog called Corporate Engagement, takes Steve to task for this question in a recent post. He notes that Edelman, the PR firm where Steve works, represents Microsoft (which he freely admits in the post) but that he says he was there “as a blogger.” So if Rubel had a month to plan for it, why didn’t he ask a better question? Cook’s post is entitled “Rubel inadvertently demonstrates the value of traditional journalism.” Cook says: “I’d hate to see blogging just become a way of the powerful giving the appearance of being open and accessible by using these carefully orchestrated events with people who seem to be overcome by their audience with the great monopolist. There is not going to be much ’speaking truth to power’ in these situations.” This is a fair point (Todd at Geek News Central asks the same thing). Yes, Steve admitted he works for Edelman, but says he was invited as a blogger (and therefore was supposedly independent). So why such a lame question? I realize that Steve is not - nor has he ever claimed to be - a journalist, but still. That kind of thing makes Barbara Walters’ Oscar special seem hard-hitting. Comment Tag: Bill Gates Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | FurlView All Articles by Mathew Ingram About the Author: Mathew Ingram [note only one “t” in Mathew] is a technology writer and blogger for the Globe and Mail, a national newspaper based in Toronto, and also writes about the Web and media at http://www.mathewingram.com/work and http://www.mathewingram.com/media. […]

[…] Bill Gates told me to just rip it » Mathew Ingram: mathewingram.com/work […]

Everyone got to ask one question and there was some general discussion for about an hour with what some described as a very relaxed Gates. Some of the questions - like Mike’s question about DRM, which I wrote about here, and Liz Gannes’ excellent question about the future of web-based applications - were fairly hard-hitting, but others well, not so much. Like Steve Rubel’s question: “What’s on your Zune?” (This wasn’t the only softball, of course; there was also a