Remember last month when some DRM advocates were talking about how they should change the name of DRM, since DRM had such a negative connotation? This was amusing, since the whole reason it was called digital "rights" management in the first place was to make it sound more palatable than digital "restrictions," which is what it really was. However, it seems that some are taking that concept of "renaming" DRM to a new level... by calling DRM files "DRM-free." Yesterday we wrote about Lala.com's new service that supposedly would offer DRM-free songs for purchase from Warner Music. We noted the oddity of supposedly DRM-free files only being able to be loaded onto iPods, since that suggested there clearly was some form of restriction on the files. However, it's becoming clear that there are certainly some types of DRM being used. In Bob Lefsetz' latest blog post, he notes that each file has a watermark that identifies its owner, and if you're not the owner, you won't be able to play that song. In other words, the supposedly DRM-free tracks... have DRM. It's just a slightly different type of DRM.
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The European Court for Human Rights has ruled in favor of a woman who sued the British government after her boss in her public-sector job monitored her personal phone calls and internet use while she was at work. While the decision does set some precedent that monitoring employees' personal communications, even if done on work time over work equipment, contravenes the EU's human-rights laws, it also makes it clear that it's only in certain circumstances. Basically, to avoid legal problems, an employer has to have a policy covering acceptable use of its systems and equipment, and that policy has to say that employees' communications could be monitored if it wants to spy on employees' communications. While it seems a little strong to call this a human-rights violation, and it would seem wise to err on the side of caution and assume your employer can or will monitor what goes across their networks, the court's decision doesn't seem unreasonable. If employers want to waste their time trying to find all that lost productivity by spying on their employees, some disclosure would probably be appreciated. If only all potential human-rights violators would be so courteous.
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