Bit Revolver

I previously covered the news that Yahoo! was shutting down the licensing servers for its music store, leaving its customers out in the cold come October 1^st, 2008. CNet is reporting that Yahoo! plans to issue refunds to customers affected by the shutdown, and is also looking into a way to issue replacement tracks as DRM-free MP3 files.

My hat is off to Yahoo! for choosing the high road and taking care of their customers. I only hope that Microsoft follows their lead, since the MSN Music store is involved in a similar controversy.

The WAKE ‘n BACON is an alarm clock that wakes you with the smell of a freshly cooked strip of bacon. Much safer than putting a foreman grill on the floor next to your bed.

Link via Ross McKillop.

Effective October 1^st, 2008, customers who purchased content from the Yahoo! Music store will no longer be able to move their tracks to new computers. Should these customers buy new computers or wish to put their tracks on different hard drives or other devices after 10/1, they will find themselves quite out of luck.

Content from the Yahoo! Music store is crippled with DRM software intended to prevent piracy. In order to legitimately transfer music to new computers and other devices, the software must download a license key from the Yahoo! Music servers. Yahoo! plans to shut down this licensing system on October 1^st.

Yahoo! representatives state that they have been encouraging customers to backup their music to discs for the last six months, however that method results in a sound quality reduction.

Microsoft made this very same announcement with regards to their MSN Music Store in April, and eventually agreed to leave their licensing servers online for a further 3 years. We will soon see if a public outcry forces Yahoo! to make the same compromise.

Whether the deadline is extended for 3 years or 30, a compromise is not good enough — at some point, the licensing servers will be shut off and customers will be left out in the cold… customers who did the right thing and paid money for their digital music. None of this music should have been crippled with Digital Rights Management in the first place. A recording industry waging an all-out-war against piracy should be ashamed of itself for showing such disrespect to people who choose to open their wallets in lieu of illegally downloading free MP3s.

There are a number of online music retailers who sell DRM-free content: Amazon MP3 deals in DRM-free music, and many of the tracks available in the iTunes Music Store do not have DRM.

Link via Daring Fireball.

This YouTube video shows KTLA reporter Eric Spillman ridiculing customers who are standing in line to buy the new iPhone 3G in Burbank, CA. As if Spillman wasn’t doing a good enough job of making himself appear unprofessional, the first customer to whom he lobs a few snide questions fires back with some questions of his own regarding Spillman’s integrity as a journalist. Someone buy that man a beer.

Link via Daring Fireball.

Photo sharing site Flickr has announced a deal with Getty Images wherein the stock agency will approach Flickr members to include specific photos in the Getty inventory through a special communications platform that is currently under development.

Getty images has a post regarding the deal on their blog, written by Flickr general manager Kakul Srivastav. A shorter but equally detail-barren post is up on the Flickr blog, and there is some discussion going on in the Flickr help forum.

A Q&A with Flickr and Getty confirms that Flickr members who enter into deals with Getty will be paid, but has a bit of disheartening news for Flickr contributors looking to quit their day jobs:

From our perspective, on the Flickr side, we’re not expecting this will be a huge stream of monetization for our members. For some it might be, but that’s not really the driving force. The driving force is we really feel we want Flickr to be a place where photos can be all that they can be.

This pretty vague statement could mean the licensing fees won’t be much, but it could also mean that since it sounds like Getty will be making individual selections on the image level, one photographer will probably not contribute more than a few photos to the Flickr/Getty collection. Photographer Thomas Hawk mentions to a Seattle PI article that claims contributors will be paid in the same manner as professionals.

Whatever the case may be, the Flickr blog makes light of the fact that their members produce some truly remarkable photos — which should rightly translate into competitive licensing fees.

“The D3, D700, and Canon” is a sharp analysis of the state of professional-grade digital cameras by James Duncan Davidson. While Canon has been going after the introductory consumer-level DSLR market full-force, Nikon has managed to catch up to Canon’s line of professional-grade equipment.

My own photography is quite casual so I have not been chomping any bits — in fact, I was quite happy to purchase a brand new 5D at a significant discount — but I can definitely feel the tension in the air when it comes to the subject of a 5D successor. If Canon ever had any intentions to abandon that niche and push its users up into the 1-series bracket, then the Nikon D700 has certainly changed that game plan.