Sometimes people really do listen. If you’re familiar with the sci-fi publishing powerhouse Tom Doherty Associates (AKA Tor, Forge, Orb, Starscape, etc.) then you have reason to celebrate. DRM has just been taken off the table for their e-book publishing.

“Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time,” said Tom Doherty, president of TDA. “They’re a technically sophisticated bunch, and DRM is a constant annoyance to them. It prevents them from using legitimately-purchased e-books in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of e-reader to another.”

Finally!

They get it!

One can only hope that more and more publishers of books, music, movies, games, etc. all grasp this basic premise: DRM is broken. It doesn’t stop piracy. But it does annoy legitimate customers. DRM causes a loss in sales. You’d probably be surprised if you stopped to count your losses in sales from piracy compared to your losses in sales from using DRM.  If you ever bothered to use real numbers.

It’s not that piracy isn’t evil.

It’s that heavy-handed DRM is often more so.

Fighting piracy should be done.  DRM just isn’t a good way to do it.  Besides almost always being ineffective, it takes away rights from the consumer, not to mention can often just be really annoying.

It’s nice to finally see big names seeing the light.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is proving that just because they’re an independent non-profit organization to oversee many internet-related tasks in a world-wide-web doesn’t mean that they’re actually competent.

The recent move to support the generic top-level domain (gTLD) where anyone can register .anything instead of just .com, .org, .net, etc. continues to be ground to a halt due to security incompetence from ICANN. The TLD Application System (TAS) which companies worldwide have been utilizing to apply for their gTLDs since January has now been down for almost two weeks straight due to a bug causing serious security issues; namely, that some applicants can see information belonging to, well, just about anyone else. Oops!

ICANN knew of the bug since March 19th, but the TAS webpage was not actually pulled offline until almost a month later on 12 April 2012, just 12 hours before the final application submission deadline, because someone finally tapped a clue about just how serious of a security issue this bug actually was.

So while amazing enough that such a prestigious and important centerpoint to the internet could even allow such an amazingly insecure gaff to ever happen in the first place is enough to blow anyone’s mind. But then ICANN’s further refusal to admit and act on their massive security leak, leaving everything in place and active for almost a month after the bug was caught, makes it ten times worse.

And yet, it compounds even further, because now almost two weeks after the bug was finally taken seriously, five weeks later, the bug is still unresolved. And for almost two weeks now, the TAS website is still down.

ICANN initially hoped to resolve things by the 17th, but as you can see, that sure didn’t happen. Having failed to meet that deadline, they promised to give folks an update on the timing by the 20th. But besides missing that deadline slightly, it also turned out to be a faux update anyway as they merely promised to give us some kind of news by the 27th. So this Friday will we even know what’s going on? Will ICANN finally have fixed their TAS website? Will gTLD registration get back on track?

Only time will tell, because right now ICANN sure isn’t.

Meanwhile, the planned “Reveal Day” on the 30th is, obviously, postponed. The final filing deadline is already 20 days late because of this SNAFU, and will likely be much later yet.

Why does this matter? Because obviously you can’t have just anyone willy-nilly owning something as important to the world as .com. So all of the gTLDs have to be researched, validated, vetted, made to dance, nauseated, etc. before ICANN will just hand them over to someone to own. Because of competition, many companies who are likely to want their specific .something have completely avoided all public mention of wanting to rule their .specific so that no one else can even think of applying for control of that .whatever. So a lot of the applications were all meant to be super-secret hush-hush type activities. ICANN could silently vet them, and in the case of multiple companies applying to own the same .name, an auction would be set up by ICANN. Which could get very expensive very quickly.

So leaking any information whatsoever during the process could cost companies millions (if not billions?) of dollars.

And likewise having the cut-off point for this first round of new gTLDs being continually extended due to everything having been FUBARed on ICANN’s end just gives companies more time to think, to uncover secrets, and to basically muck-up everyone’s plans to steal .whatever for a mint.

At this point, ICANN would almost better be served simply by falling on their sword and admitting gross incompetence for having so grievously screwed up. It’ll also be interesting to see what happens after the dust settles and financial losses are on the minds of companies worldwide.

However it turns out, ICANN has certainly proven one thing, even the supposed Master Of The Internet can greatly screw up security. These days no one seems to be able to do it right. I mean, come on, if ICANN can’t get internet security right, what chance does Sony have?

On the heels of the SOPA failure, it was to be major victory for the FBI MPAA and their lobbyists. The (allegedly) evil Kim Dotcom (yes, he legally changed his name to Dotcom) was brought down in a cooperative effort by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation and New Zealand’s police force.

Because Kim (I refuse to continue using that last name) was a resident of New Zealand, the NZ government had to be brought in. It couldn’t just be an FBI thing. And because the MPAA … I mean the FBI wanted to extradite Kim to the US for legal action, it had to be a federal criminal matter. A simple civil lawsuit was insufficient “justice”.

What is this all over? Well Kim and Co. operated the dastardly service called MegaUpload, a gigantic file storage / sharing website. Upload your file, and anyone can download it.

You can see the problem here. Plenty of naughty file sharers would upload their ripped DVD, Blu Ray, songs, and what have you copyrighted materials to which they did not own the distribution rights thereof. And because MegaUpload didn’t enforce or validate those copyrights, plenty of pirates used their service.

The MPAA alleges that the damage caused by MegaUpload reaches $500 million. I don’t know about you, but that seems like an awfully improbably number of DVD sales to me.

Now, one could argue whether MegaUpload didn’t enforce copyright law because they didn’t care, or because they didn’t actually have to, or even because there was no feasible way for any such business to reasonably and effectively do so, especially on such a large scale. (Others, like YouTube, have tried, failed and eventually given up with solutions like agreeing to just pay a blanket infringement fee to avoid litigation.)

And one could further argue whether or not that alleged lack of care actually makes a case for coercion of criminal behavior.

There’s a lot of supposition there that legal talkers may be hard pressed to actually prove.

There’s also that little matter of MegaUpload not being hosted in the US.

But these arguments hardly matter at this point. Because the FBI came, they saw, and they took MegaUpload down. (Well, at least the NZ police did.) Kim and Co. were all arrested. Assets of questionable value (reports range from $20 million to $50 million) were seized, servers were brought down, etc.

Assets were then juggled because the court order used to seize the assets was the wrong one. The police commissioner tried to correct the error by applying for a second seizure order, but it may have been too little, too late. The NZ high court determined that the first order was in fact null and void, and was to decide whether or not the assets would be returned or if the attempt to fix the problem was sufficiently legal to keep the assets, but strangely, I couldn’t find word on whether or not the assets were ever released back or not.

Meanwhile, two of Kim’s Co. made bail and went back to their cushy lifestyles. Kim however was forced to remain in the clink on the theory that he would be a flight risk.

Also up in the air is the question of what happens to everyone’s legal files. It’s a dispute that is conveniently neglected. Many people who used MegaUpload did so to share pictures, home movies, personal projects, and all sorts of files which they had the legal right to redistribute. In fact, this legal use would be the actual purpose of the file sharing website.

But the MPAA contends that there are no innocents, and that in spite of the legality of the usage, no one should get access to their files. Ever. Regardless of legality and any lack of copyright infringements. They also want access to that data for their own pursuit of piracy.

The courts have what they need, and so are no longer paying the storage fees of Carpathia, the hosting site contracted to hold the data. Kim is obviously no longer paying Carpathia’s fees either. Carpathia of course, want to free this 25 petabytes of data, claiming that it is costing them around $9000 per day to store it on their servers. And if they do, every legitimate and legal file would be lost.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is trying to help people get their files back, but there are absolutely no guarantees. So legitimate businesses like that run by Kyle Goodwin, who did perfectly legal things using MegaUpload such as online reporting of local high school sporting events, using MegaUpload as a file backup service for his completely legal files, are suffering financial losses because of the MegaUpload takedown. And if all of those legitimate files were permanently lost…

It’s a major cluster flock.

But it gets even more ludicrous. From the beginning various professionals of law have argued that the whole case is legally flawed. Not the least of which is the argument that going back to US case law of the infamous “Betamax case”, where a precedent was set that if a product is widely used for legitimate purposes then it is not responsible for the illegitimate purposes performed by its users. (At least so long as it does not coerce, condone, support, etc. those illegitimate purposes.)

Something that the FBI MPAA was perfectly willing to overlook.

And yet the ignominy isn’t finished there either. Because it now appears unlikely that the criminal conspiracy charges in America will even make it to trial because the FBI forgot to serve any papers to MegaUpload in the US. Well, “forgot” may be a bit rash, I suppose. They allege the reason for this is that, oh wait, MegaUpload isn’t located within the United States’ jurisdiction. Oh yeah. I guess there is that. Something also heavily argued by many a law-speaker.

During a pre-trial hearing in Virginia it has been reported that judge Loam O’Grady expressed if, “we are ever going to have a trial in this matter.”

And without those criminal charges, there’s no legal ground to extradite Kim from NZ to the US.

Also a loss on the criminal front further weakens the corresponding civil case.

Meaning that Kim may just get away scot-free. And may be getting his assets back. And may have grounds for a countersuit that could net him even more money.

So what was hailed as a MegaVictory against file sharing sites like MegaUpload has degraded into a MegaDisaster, and could become the year’s Epic Fail.

But then, what do you expect when you let lobbyists run the government.

Most people have likely even forgotten about it, but Oracle’s lawsuit against Google for copyright infringement of their Java source code is finally going to trial.

Yes, that’s right. The trial never even began yet. Has yet to begin. Will not have begun. Etc.

Well … until now.

That’s right. The gloves have come off. Negotiations have failed. It’s time for the courtroom.

And what happens next could invariably change the course of the world. Or at least US copyright law.

Though a lot has been said and done, the heart of the matter revolves around the Java API. Oracle seems to be trying to claim that the API itself is actually copyrightable. Google, having implemented their own copy of the Java API into Android, is of course against this notion.

It’s potentially a tricky subject. Not because it’s actually all that tricky, but because no one has ever really tried such a bone-headed defense of an API before.

You see, the thing is, copyright protects content. The lines of code in the source code files that make up a computer program, for example. Those specific words (and numbers, and so forth) in that specific order is what copyright protects. If someone says the same thing, but in a different way, using different words to give the same meaning, copyright does not protect that.

Which is what make summaries and even reverse engineering possible, legal, and quite often fruitful.

This is where patent law comes in. You patent an idea. You copyright the content. It’s a clear division.

And maybe Google should have licensed Java from Oracle, to save themselves from any patent disputes.

Oracle, however, is contending that API (Application Programming Interface) is copyrightable.

Which is utter nonsense. The API is the description of how to use the system, not source code. Not content. Not copyrightable. API would fall under patent at best, and even that isn’t really true because API isn’t even an idea, a specific means, nor an exact formula. API is just a handshake. API is the instruction manual. It is neither the idea, nor the implementation, nor the content.

And that is the dangerous part of this trial. Whether or not Google violated Oracle patents is one matter. Whether or not Google specifically copied Java source code line-for-line to violate copyright is another matter.

But the heart of this trial is about neither of those side issues. The heart of this trial is about whether or not the API can be covered under copyright law. Right now, no one in their right mind would expect that it could be. But should the trial set a deranged precedent to protect APIs under copyright, it would shake the very foundations of every single computer programmer’s life and business model.

Perhaps Apple has finally reached too far. The iPad 3 was the forbidden fruit that tempted mankind, but it is quickly becoming a regrettable indulgence for many.

It started with complaints about being too hot to handle. Various people even pulled out their sundry thermometers and even FLIR cameras to report that yes, indeed, the iPad 3 gets hotter than the iPad 2 and 1 ever did. In some cases just a few degrees. In other cases, enough to literally make it uncomfortable or allegedly even burn the holder.

And if that had been the end of it, Apple might have gotten off easy, like they did with Antennagate. (You know, where your iPhone4′s antenna is all too often attenuated by you simply holding your phone “wrong”, causing really bad connections, dropped calls, etc. Wrong according to Apple. If it’s actually wrong then why have so many people been trying to hold it that way?)

Alas, there’s more. Much much more.

Next was, well, Antennagate 2. The shiny new iPad3s were, reportedly, having some really bad connections to Wi-Fi. Yep. All your network connections are belong to … no one. Even though your old iPad (or your iPhone, or dare I suggest any other wireless device like an Android phone, a laptop, a printer, a PC) could connect to a wireless router easily and reliably, the iPad 3 … couldn’t. The range of iPad3s was strangely shorter. The connection quality was worse. And that’s if they could connect to your wireless router at all!

But then Antennagate 2 got even worse. Because the same thing started being reported with 3G networks. Especially if you dared to do something stupid like leave your home (with its local Wi-Fi) and roam off to a 3G connection. The iPad 3 would claim that you were connected, only the internet was strangely missing and nothing networked (nearly every app in existence) would work. Until you rebooted your iPad 3. And then it would sort itself out. At least until the next time that you changed networks, such as coming home.

And no matter what you did to reset or change your network settings, the iPad 3 would claim to be working, to be connected, but clearly still be lacking the internet. (Except for rebooting, the only true fix.)

Even worse yet, even 4G reports of the same are coming in now!

Apple didn’t bother testing their hardware?

But even Antennagate2 isn’t enough rain on the iPad 3 parade. Now reports are also coming in that the iPad3’s brilliant Retina Display is also causing issues. Not the least of which are that even with the bigger battery, causing the iPad 3 to be chunkier and heavier, the battery life often times still comes up short compared to the iPad 2.

Then, however, it became even stranger. Reports are now even coming in that the Retina Display makes content on the iPad 3 look worse than on the iPad 2. What?! How could so many more pixels go so wrong? Well, in the up-conversion, apparently.

Yep. If your app, webpage, image, whatever you load is formatted for the iPad 1 or 2 (and why wouldn’t it be?) it is a lower resolution than the native resolution of the iPad 3, thanks to that shiny display. Apple told us that this would be okay though, because it was a direct 4x increase. (Twice as much vertically, and twice as much horizontally.) So everything would still look exactly the same as it did on the iPad 2.

Except – apparently -  it doesn’t.

Just like how most TVs will try to convert your crappy standard definition signal into a shinier high-def image so that it takes up the full screen, the iPad3 attempts to do the same and up-convert your iPad2-sized content to the iPad3’s larger resolution. If it’s drawing, such as rendering text, drawing a box, a line, a window, etc. then it tends to look fine. But if it’s a graphic, a pre-rendered image of any sort, the iPad 3 seems to have a pretty bad algorithm to up-convert. And the result is especially noticeable for any apps, web pages, etc. which render text into their images/pages instead of using actual HTML-formatted/placed text. Which apparently a significant number of content providers (such as online magazines) do. And the result is that in those cases what looks just fine on an iPad 2 looks absolutely awful on an iPad 3.

Of course, whenever anyone complains to Apple that, “It hurts when I do this,” Apple’s answer (when/if it ever gives one) is simply, “Then don’t do that.” Which is, of course, no answer. Just a very old joke.

So not only has the iPad 3 spawned Antennagate2, but now it has also spawned Retinagate. And having a shorter battery life.  On top of being too hot to handle. And just plain harder to handle due to the size and weight increase.

All for an iPad with the same OS and apps that everyone already had.

Thanks to Apple’s new iPad, buyer’s remorse is certainly on the rise.

As are the thread counts in Apple forums.

It’s almost enough to make one think it might be worth the time and effort to actually research a purchase instead of pre-ordering or waiting in line for hours on the release day.

But probably not.  Because that’s not the Apple way.