[d@DCC] RE: puretracks.com and virus-free music? (fwd)

[Russell McOrmond]

  This is the final reply I received from Puretracks.com.  I don't intend
to write back.  It will be interesting to see if it gets forwarded to
others who may put more thought into the implications of their technology
choices.

---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> 
 Governance software that controls ICT, automates government policy, or
 electronically counts votes, shouldn't be bought any more than 
 politicians should be bought.  -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 14:48:40 -0400
From: Puretracks Help Desk <help at puretracks.com>
To: 'Russell McOrmond' <russell at flora.ca>
Subject: RE: puretracks.com and virus-free music? (fwd)

Thank you for contacting Puretracks.com Help Desk.

The rights of the composers and record companies, from piracy the trust is
given to the artists and companies who make a living at writing and
recording music. The copyright belongs to the creator of a product or
whatnot and thus has to be enforced and followed. Thank you for your
comments and we will surely consider all that you have written but are
following proper lawful and ethical procedures with our service.

Puretracks.com Help Desk

-----Original Message-----
From: Russell McOrmond [mailto:russell at flora.ca]
Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2003 12:18 AM
To: Puretracks Help Desk
Cc: General Copyright Discussions; CANadian OPENsource Education and
Research; info at lulu.com
Subject: RE: puretracks.com and virus-free music? (fwd)



  Thank you for the quick reply which I included below for the other
people copied in this message. I believe that aspects of my questions were
misunderstood.

  "Digital Rights Management" (DRM) technology, like "technological
protection measures" (TPM) or "trusted computing" are phrases often used
that are not often understood.  Important questions such as "whos rights",
"protection from what", and "who is offered trust" need to be asked.

  As I write on my personal homepage at http://www.flora.ca/russell/ ,
"Any 'hardware assist' for communications, whether it be eye-glasses,
VCR's, or personal computers, must be under the control of the citizen and
not a third party."

  With "Digital Rights Management" it is the claimed rights of the holder
of copyright that are being protected from the citizen who is the owner of
the technology in question.  There are many rights to be considered when
creating and using ICT technology than only those of copyright holders,
such as the property rights of the owners of the technology, and the
communications, cultural and creators rights of all citizens.

  With "technological protection measures" as used by the content
industries they are trying to protect their content from the owners of the
computers. The proper use of TPM's is to ensure that third parties other
than the sender and receiver of a message are not able to intercept or
control communications, while the content industries continue to attempt
(and will always fail) to use TPMs to achieve the opposite effect.

  With "trusted computing" the trust is sometimes offered by "software
manufacturing" vendors to copyright holders, with trust taken away from
the owner of the computer who copyright holders claim should not be
allowed to be in control of their own computer.  Citizens should be able
to trust that their computers are under their own control and not that of
a remote software vendor, copyright holder or attacker (viruses or
otherwise).  A true trusted computing environment would be protecting
computer owners from all of these types of remote control.



  When I said it is important to offer alternative ICT platforms to those
that are increasingly being designed to be under the control of third
parties, I included so-called "content industries" who are trying to make
use of remote control technologies like DRM.


  I thank you for quickly clarifying that Puretracks will not be offering
music to people who wish to retain full control over their own personal
ICT.  While I signed up for Lulu today (See http://www.lulu.com/russell/ )
and plan to publish and spend money there, I will not be subscribing to
your service.

  As more modern services like Lulu that protect the rights of citizens to
own and control their own ICT receive better promotion and larger
audiences, I look forward to hearing the future changes in legacy
platforms like Puretracks.

---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
 Governance software that controls ICT, automates government policy, or
 electronically counts votes, shouldn't be bought any more than
 politicians should be bought.  -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 13:40:14 -0400
From: Puretracks Help Desk <help at puretracks.com>
To: 'Russell McOrmond' <russell at flora.ca>
Subject: RE: puretracks.com and virus-free music?

Thank you for contacting Puretracks.com Help Desk.

Thank you for your interest.  We are working on providing functionality with
other platforms, unfortunately we are only supporting PC's that are using a
Windows platform at this time. The DRM technology that is currently
available for the Mac is not secure enough and is going to have to be
updated therefore we can't offer this in Mac form right now but we will as
soon as it is possible. As for other platforms, the DRM has not yet been
created for use with them but hopefully will be soon also. In the meantime
we will certainly pass this along to the appropriate person (s) for
consideration.

Puretracks.com Help Desk

-----Original Message-----
From: Russell McOrmond [mailto:russell at flora.ca]
Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2003 1:07 PM
To: feedback at puretracks.com
Cc: General Copyright Discussions; CANadian OPENsource Education and
Research
Subject: puretracks.com and virus-free music?


(Message being sent to Puretracks.com feedback, a few relevant public
discussion groups, as well as Bcc'd to a few journalists who have written
about this issue in the past)

  I saw a commercial the other night talking about "Virus free, porn free,
music downloads -- only $.99 per song".  I thought it was pressplay.com so
I sent a letter to support at napster.com with a public copy at
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/discuss/2209 .  Another participant in
that forum informed me that this advertisement was from Puretracks.com .

  The Puretracks.com site only says "Our website is available to Canadian
residents only and requires Windows Internet Explorer version 5.0 or
higher."

  Since I am connected via a Canadian ISP here in Ottawa, the problem must
be the Microsoft requirement as I do not use any Microsoft or other brands
of "software manufacturing" in my home or business.

  As a security and privacy professional I use higher security standards
based operating systems such as Linux and *BSD which have had full public
scientific peer review.  This higher level of security is available to
MacOS-X as well given that the underlying platform, Darwin, is itself
fully public peer reviewed Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS
http://www.flora.ca/floss.shtml ).

  This public peer review is what is necessary to make computers less
susceptible to viruses which tend to either be software errors or in the
case of many Microsoft products it is basic design flaws.  This public
peer review also ensures that computers and other Information and
Communications Technology (ICT) are under the control of their owners, and
not third parties.

  I have documented the problems with Microsoft Office and Microsoft
Outlook in a document on my work website where I explain why I do not
accept file attachments from Microsoft outlook.
  http://www.flora.ca/no-outlook.shtml

  This page references how some members of the Internet Engineering Task
Force (IETF), the group that defines the basic standards that form the
Internet, believe that Microsoft should be held criminally negligent for
some of the deliberate design flaws at the root of many of the viruses
that infect their customers.

  This email filtering ends up filtering out the vast majority of SPAM and
Viruses that otherwise I would have to wade through, and has been a huge
time saver.  The automatic messages this filtering system sends out has
encouraged a number of people to switch from Outlook to more safe peer
reviewed email packages such as Mozilla Mail.


  I am wondering if I went to the right site from this commercial.  If so,
I am wondering why you claim to be virus-free when you mandate the usage
of the very platforms that lack peer review and have been the target of
the vast majority of viruses?  If someone really wanted virus free music
downloads they would be downloading their music in an open vendor neutral
file format like MP3 onto a fully peer reviewed and secure platform that
would play the music.

  I would understand a virus-free music site that advocated people to only
use Linux, *BSD and MacOS-X to download music safely, but I do not at all
understand a site that requires exactly the opposite.


  As a contrast to your site I would like to point out LuluMUSIC (formerly
nowRECORDING.com ) at http://music.lulu.com/ site which made use of fully
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) compliant websites and Moving Picture
Experts Group (MPEG) standard Layer-3 audio (MP3 for short).  This site is
a mixture of a for-profit creator-controlled market and a
creator-controlled non-profit sharing system currently owned by Bob Young,
co-founder of Red Hat Software Inc. and owner of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

  http://www.itbusiness.ca/index.asp?theaction=61&lid=1&sid=53762

  Please also read the open letter I sent to relevant MPs around copyright
reform that referenced this article as well:
  http://www.digital-copyright.ca/discuss/2161


  Given the RedHat Linux connection, Lulu will continue to work with open
vendor-neutral standards based ICT platforms that are under the control of
music creators and audiences.  This is an important alternative to ICT
platforms that are increasingly being designed to be under the control of
third parties: whether these third parties be the "software manufacturers"
like Microsoft, the so-called "content industries", or the creators of the
viruses that infect these ICT platforms.

---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
 Governance software that controls ICT, automates government policy, or
 electronically counts votes, shouldn't be bought any more than
 politicians should be bought.  -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/


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