A UK researcher has spent years interviewing people about whether DRM has affected their ability to use content in ways ordinarily protected by the law. Surprise! It has, even leading one sight-impaired woman to piracy.

Source: ars technica

Even as it attacks DRM on music, Apple is continuing to add more DRM to its own hardware (we recently documented all of Apple’s various hardware DRM restrictions). The latest example is the new iPod Shuffle. According to the careful reviewers at iLounge, third-party headphone makers will have to use yet-another Apple “authentication chip” if they want to interoperate with the new Shuffle.

Source: EFF

Quote from Fictionwise - an eBook distributor:

Fictionwise used Overdrive to provide DRM encrypted ebooks to their customers and Overdrive has informed them that they will be shutdown on 30 January with no reason given. Since Fictionwise doesn’t have the decryption keys, they are not able to provide new versions of the books to all customers.

Source: Fiction announcement.

(No word on movies, TV shows, games, audiobooks or applications).

Apple, the last major retailer of DRM-encumbered music announced, live at MacWorld, that all iTunes music will be going DRM-free.

Source: Defective by Design

The BBC has created a version of the iPlayer that works with both Mac and Linux computers. The two systems, which have been able to stream BBC programmes via the iPlayer for a year, will now be able to handle downloads.

Source: BBC News

Using Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), we intend to make BBC iPlayer download functionality available on Mac, Linux and Windows for the first time later this year. Whatever platform you use, you’ll now be able to download TV programmes from the BBC to watch later - on the train, in the garden, or wherever you like.

Source: BBC Internet Blog

Yahoo announced last week that it would no longer issue authorization keys for the digital rights management, or DRM, software on its songs. This meant that anyone who bought songs from the service would still be able to hear their songs through its service but would be unable to move them to other devices or computers.

This did not play well with Web users. Now Yahoo Music plans to issue refunds and is trying to go one step further. If a customer would prefer music over a refund, Yahoo is looking for a way to give the customer copies of the purchased songs in the DRM-free MP3 format, according to a Yahoo representative.

Source: Greg Sandoval writing for C|Net

This afternoon, Yahoo alerted customers of its erstwhile downloadable music store that it would no longer provide support after Sept. 30 … The upshot: starting Oct. 1, said customers won’t be able to revive frozen tracks or move working ones onto new hard drives or computers, because Yahoo won’t be providing any more keys to the songs’ DRM wrappers.

Source: LA Times

The Inquirer sends word that:

Purchasers of MP3 music files from The Vole have managed to get themselves a stay of execution, as Microsoft announces that it will keep its DRM activation servers online until 2011.

Hat tip: David, writing on the ORG-discuss mailing list.

AfterDawn.com reports that:

The Helsinki Court of Appeals has overturned a controversial ruling made last year, which found that CSS copy protection in use on almost all retail movie DVDs was “ineffective”. Finnish copyright law (amended in 2006 by adoption of EUCD) prohibits circumventing “effective technological measures”, but the court original found that CSS cannot be described as an “efficient copy protection mechanism” anymore.

Within days of the ruling, the prosecutor announced plans to appeal the decision and on Monday, the Appeals Court overturned the original ruling. It rejected the District Court’s judgment based on the objectives of DRM regulation.

The legislation in question is based on Articles 6 and 8 of the EU Copyright Directive (EUCD), which was implemented in UK law in 2002.

Via Techdirt.