In many cases, CTOs for production companies understand and agree on the futility of DRM. Contracts with the actors and the production crew, however, are what require that the distribution be controlled in some manner. Specifically, things like royalties for distribution become difficult to calculate when there is no DRM involved.

The technical folks in the industry -- even the ones who make the decisions -- don't particularly want DRM but are often contractually bound to deliver it. Perhaps years down the line, a better model for cast/crew compensation will present itself and these agreements will slowly start to reform themselves.

After looking through the package released through BitTorrent, not everybody's password has been compromised. Gawker does appear to store passwords in an encrypted form and only particularly weak passwords have been cracked. My username, for instance, does appear in their raw DB dump (with an encrypted form of my password) but not in a separate file which lists the passwords they were able to crack. I have a fairly strong password and I believe that's why. Real examples of passwords weak enough to be cracked include "may1404" and "122190". Nothing like, for instance, "STux_s7a" (an old password of mine) appears in unencrypted form, and that isn't even a very strong "strong" password.

Like Loop Recorder? I used to use Loop Recorder to time-shift the Jim Rome show while I was at work and have to save right to my desktop. It does handle internet audio, though.

Patrick

While the anime scene is still considered by most licensers as "illegal", and it often pulls together many people that aren't necessarily more or less intelligent than the warez scene frequenters, it does attempt a noble and resume-brightening service by getting fans a product they couldn't possibly buy with money: translated anime shows direct from Japan.

And did anyone else mention IRC and Counter-Strike ties? I know I played CAL-O (read: the sucky ladder) and IRC was a big part of connecting with opposing teams, or just for setting up scrimmages.