The new hack nullifies sppcompai.dll, and even deactivates all the reminder popups that would otherwise ask you to activate indefinitely. But don’t expect the party to last long. This crack closely mirrors an old Vista key workaround, and if Microsoft patched it easily then, they’ll patch it easily now.

There’s one point to this story I find particularly annoying. According to My Digital Life,

The crack is possible probably due to leniency allowed on the part of Microsoft on [the] activation mechanism to avoid getting too many false-positive or complaint on activation error [sic].

It just sucks that this game will continue. Microsoft obviously wants to make activation as painless as possible, but will probably beef up the security next time to fix exploits these sort of exploits. Like most of you, I’m sick of DRM causing headaches for the ones who legally purchased the software, and developments like this certainly won’t help.

And please, let me say this: I love you guys, and I really do love getting emails from readers. But I don’t know how to do this hack. I have no idea how the hack specifically works. I don’t even have a copy of Windows 7. So please, send me emails about anything else, but not about how to unlock your new copy of Windows 7. Gracias. [My Digital Life via The Register via Ubergizmo]

So say you’re at the airport. You want to rent, I dunno, some movie that wasn’t good enough to see in the cinemas. You just format a spare SD card filled with holiday photos you’d forgotten to back up (it doesn’t appear they give you a card, but I could be mistaken), pop it in the machine, select a movie, pay $US4 or so and then have the film loaded on your card, a la ticking time bomb, with DRM.

And what can’t you do with an SD card? I mean, it plays in my iPhone…wait…I mean my Blackberry…wait…

MiniSD and MicroSD — those are the cards that most of our mobile devices will take (if they take any at all)! In case no-one told you, Blockbuster, we can’t play this shit back on our digital cameras.

(Granted, netbook owners and some laptop owners will be able to utilise the standard.)

Ah Blockbuster, you’ve arrived just in time to ignore the growing popularity of iTunes/Zune Marketplace syncing, 3G streaming and in-flight Wi-Fi all while offering your service on a medium less convenient than DVD. But don’t worry, I’m not angry. You’re just hurting yourself. [Fast Company]

He’s not revealing the method for ethical reasons, but anybody wanna fill us in on how these shenanigans work, so hopefully it’ll get fixed so developers don’t get screwed? [XDA via Engadget]

The core concept hasn’t changed since it was introduced, so here’s a quick refresh: The first tier of the system is a fairly literal update to the CD, in which customers pays around $US15 for a DRM-free MP3 album on a microSD card. The second, and potentially more interesting, part of the plan is slotRadio, which upped the SD card content to 1000 songs, the price to $US40 and the DRM warning level to “Critical”. It didn’t win too many fans here, partly because it was a flawed concept, and partly because the player sucked.

And for what it’s worth, the Clip+ looks like a better piece of hardware. Alongside its slotMusic/Radio shtick, it’s a fairly standard entry-level MP3 player, with an FM radio, anywhere from 2GB to 8GB of storage, and prices from $US40 to $US70, and—this is notable, sadly—a way to navigate your music via a one-inch OLED screen. For its benefit, you should probably just think of the Clip+ as another one in the growing pile of commoditised low-end MP3 players, that just happens to support one of the most bizarre marketing ploys the music industry has ever seen. [SanDisk]

SanDisk Debuts Sansa Clip+ MP3 Player – Offering Big Sound and Tons of Features in a Tiny, Stylish Package

New microSD Card Slot Extends the Fun Indefinitely, Letting Consumers Listen to Thousands of Additional Songs in Seconds

MILPITAS, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—SanDisk® Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK), the global leader in flash memory cards, today announced the Sansa® Clip+ MP3 player. The new Sansa Clip+ MP3 player comes equipped with a new microSD™ memory card slot that enables consumers to listen to thousands of additional songs effortlessly.

microSD Card Compatibility Offers Major Music Enjoyment:

As the successor to the best selling full-featured sub-$100 MP3 player in America, the Sansa Clip+ MP3 player is fully compatible with SanDisk slotRadio™ and slotMusic™ cards, as well as any microSD card pre-loaded with music. By sliding any of these cards into the new Sansa Clip+ memory card slot, music lovers can instantly listen to premium songs and handcrafted playlists without consuming any of the device’s onboard memory.

* slotRadio cards: SanDisk slotRadio cards (starting at $US39.99 MSRP, U.S. only) give consumers immediate access to some of their favourite styles of music, including Rock, Country, Oldies and Hip Hop/R&B. Most slotRadio cards contain 1,000 songs** featuring chart topping artists from the Billboard® charts.
* slotMusic cards: Consumers can also insert a SanDisk slotMusic card into their Sansa Clip+ MP3 player’s microSD card slot to plug-and-play the latest albums (on microSD card) from today’s hottest artists, as well as greatest hits’ compilations from past decades (cards start at $US14.99 MSRP, U.S. only). slotMusic cards make music portable and can also be used in mobile phones with a microSD card slot that can play MP3 files, computers with a microSD USB reader or an SD card adaptor, and even some car stereos with a microSD USB reader or SD card adaptor.
* Custom-loaded microSD cards: Consumers have the option of inserting a microSD card loaded with their own music library to listen to – up to 4,000 additional songs1 per 16GB card – which again adds interoperability with other devices, including mobile phones that are microSD card compatible.

Tailor made for budget and time-conscious music fans looking for the best MP3 player for the money, the Sansa Clip+ MP3 player offers outstanding sound quality; long-lasting rechargeable battery; bright, easy-to-read screen, and compact wearable design.

“We made a great product – the Sansa Clip – even better,” said Eric Bone, vice president, retail product marketing, SanDisk. “This small player packs big features, including a new microSD memory card slot that gives music lovers the ability to listen to thousands of additional songs in seconds. It’s the perfect player for travelers, busy mums, fitness buffs or anyone looking to enjoy music without the hassle of loading songs from their computer or updating playlists.”

The Sansa Clip+ MP3 player is expected to be available at sandisk.com and bestbuy.com on Aug. 31, and at other retailers nationwide on Sept. 13. The device will be available in Canada and Europe in time for the holiday season. The music player comes in a variety of capacities, including 2-gigabytes* (GB) of onboard memory for up to 500 songs1 for $US39.99 (MSRP), 4GB which holds up to 1,000 songs1 for $US49.99, and 8GB, which has an up to 2,000-song1 capacity for just $US69.99.

Consumers can show off their style by choosing the Sansa Clip+ MP3 player in red, blue or black. (Capacity and associated colours vary.)

Sansa Clip+ MP3 Player Features:

* Superior sound – one of the best sounding MP3 players on the market
* microSD expansion slot which is compatible with slotRadio and slotMusic cards and any standard microSD card
* A wearable clip for hands-free portability and effortless enjoyment of digital music on the go
* Large(1″), bright (OLED) screen with a simple user interface that makes it easy to choose playlists or songs sorted by title, artist, album, genre
* FM tuner with 40 presets for listening to sports, tuning in at the gym or your favourite music station
* Built-in microphone to record thoughts while on the go
* Equalizer mode to fine tune the listening experience
* Rechargeable, lithium ion battery with up to 15 hours of life2 – one of the most competitive battery performances for an MP3 player of its size on the market today
* Solid state flash memory for skip-free playback of music
* Support for many music download and subscription services including Rhapsody®, Napster, eMusic and others
* Designed to work seamlessly with a wide range of music formats, such as MP3, WMA, WAV, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis and Audible files (for audio books), in both unprotected and protected files

The Sansa Clip+ MP3 player is the first Windows 7 certified MP3 player (along with the Sansa® Fuze™, Sansa® View, and Sansa® Clip portable media players). This compatibility simplifies the user experience and offers a smooth transition to the forthcoming operating system.

The Sansa Clip+ MP3 player updates SanDisk’s Sansa audio/video product family, which includes the popular full-sized Sansa Fuze MP3 player, SanDisk slotRadio™ player, SanDisk slotMusic™ player and the companion SanDisk slotRadio and slotMusic cards.

The notion of having a digital copy of the movie included with a Blu-ray makes perfect sense to me. If I want to watch the film on my Full HD plasma with surround sound, then I’ll pop in the Blu-ray disc. But sometimes you just want to watch a movie on the train or while your wife watches some crappy reality TV program, so a digital copy you can play on your PC or iPod is perfect. I rip all my DVDs for this reason, but ripping Blu-rays is just a little bit too time consuming to be worth it.

Yet the digital copy solution on offer is even less worth it, especially if you pick up the movie thinking that this is a feature. For a start, it’s PC only. Sure, that may not seem like an issue to the 90% of people who use Windows, but considering that the only warning you get is a URL on the “INCLUDES DIGITAL COPY” sticker that directs you to system requirements, it kind of sucks if you’re a Mac or Linux user. The FAQs on the disc even have a question about this:

Is it also possible to use Digital Copy with Mac OS X?
Digital Copy is available for Windows XP (Home/Professional/Media Center Edition) with SP2 or Windows Vista.

So I guess that’s a no? Why not just say “No”? And then there’s the irony that a movie which stars Justin Long, iPhones and an old G3 iBook has a digital copy that won’t work on Apple products. But I digress…

If you do have a PC and want to copy the digital version to your PC, you simply insert the extra disc that comes inside the case, follow the prompts, enter a special authorisation code and then you can watch the movie. Or so they say. When you read the restrictions on the film thanks to the DRM, you really have to wonder why the studio even bothered in the first place.

You can only have the digital copy on one computer at a time. Sure, that sounds fair enough – it reduces piracy and all that. If you want to move the file to another PC, you need to delete it and reactivate it. Problem is, there’s a limit on the number of times you can do that, so logic says that if you replace your PC too many times, you’ll lose the right to install the digital copy you purchased onto your PC.

And of course, the DRM WMV file means that you can’t get it to play on your iPod or iPhone, and probably not any other portable device either.

It really makes you wonder about just how ridiculously stupid the decision makers at these movie studios really are. I’m more than happy to pay for a movie, especially when it comes to Blu-ray. But by being so draconian in their management of digital copies – something I consider I purchased alongside the Blu-ray disc – they will drive more and more people to piracy.

Why not cater to everyone with OS-agnostic versions? Even if you want to stick with WMV, offer an MP4 version for Mac (and iPod/iPhone) users as well. So long as downloading a torrent is easier and more flexible than using the official channel, these studios don’t have a hope in hell of beating piracy.

Basically, the way Kindle and the Kindle iPhone app are set up today, users have no idea how many times they can download a book, nor can they easily know how many devices can be used to read said book.

Making the situation even more confusing is the fact that the DRM information actually varies by publisher, and to find out how many times they will allow you to download a book you have to visit the legalese. Sometimes the info isn’t there, either. The worst part is this was all confirmed by an Amazon tech support person:

“How I find out (sic) how many times I can download any given book?” I asked. He replied, “I don’t think you can. That’s entirely up to the publisher and I don’t think we always know.”

I pressed – “You mean when you go to buy the book it doesn’t say ‘this book can be downloaded this number of times’ even though that limitation is there?” To which he replied, “No, I’m very sorry it doesn’t.”

As the author notes, this isn’t so bad if you’re buying a beach book or something you’ll read once and be done with it. Where it does get shitty is with reference books, which the author would like to read today, on his iPhone 3GS, and perhaps in a year, on the theoretical iPhone 4G, powered by unicorn tears. With certain books, you could be limited in such a way that your reading material does not follow your gadget’s natural upgrade cycle.

At the very least Amazon should update its policy. The best case scenario would be to allow consumers to actually, you know, literally own the books they’ve just bought. [Gear Diary]

The service is set to cost £10-15, or about $US16-$25, per month, and it would allow users to either stream or download as many tracks and albums from Universal’s catalog as they want.

It’s a great first step, but not one I would sign on for just yet. While a flat rate for unlimited MP3 downloads is amazing, having it only work for one label’s catalog limits the value, even if it is a gigantic label such as Universal. If I’m gonna pay $US20 a month, I want that to cover everything, not just some songs.

If you were looking for the catch, it’s this: Virgin has agreed to be really strict about searching for piracy and cutting off the service of offenders.

It’s a great precedent, however. If other labels jumped on board and the selection was more all-encompassing I can’t imagine many people would be able to say no to legit all-you-can-eat music for a reasonable monthly fee. And if that existed, the excuses for piracy would be harder to justify. [Reuters]

So, the Managed Copy spec, long in the making, has just been finalised by the Advanced Access Content System licence Administrator—the Blu-ray DRM dudes—and now it has to be finalised by the studios, manufacturers, Blu-ray licensers, and likely, the Blu-mpa Lumpas.

Supposing they finalise it, then you still need hardware that supports Managed Copy—not the cheap Blu-ray player you got this Christmas, or even one you’ll buy this Christmas. We’re talking 2010. And even if the right player falls off the back of a truck in 2009, the AACS authorization server won’t be running until 2010.

Okay, it’s 2010, and you have the right hardware. So you pop in your disc and tell the player to authorise a managed copy—which the studio can charge you for, so it’s not like you’re making a copy, you’re purchasing an additional copy at a lower cost, one using materials that you provide. (Raise your hand high if think studios are gonna not charge. Okay, everyone throw stuff at these people.)

If you decide it’s worth it, you can put the managed copy on another Blu-ray disc, DVD, Windows Media DRM-compatible storage, SD card, etc. Oh yeah, if you grab the 50GB full-res copy, where are you gonna store ‘em all? What a mess. And besides, who honestly watches real Blu-ray? We’ll take the far simpler Digital Copy, thanks. [Video Business via Blu-ray]

For full resolution, click here.

It wasn’t until the beginning of the 20th century that mass-produced recordings were available to the average person—the concept of buying music is amazingly new. (Or to some, ooooooold.) Just a century ago, the first records began to do for music what the Gutenberg press did for words. Before them, music was handed crudely from person to person; after, it could reach millions, untouched and unspoiled.

If we couldn’t record music, the Beatles would have never left Liverpool. By the same token the Jonas Brothers would have never left Georgia or Disney World or the Old Testament or wherever the hell they came from. Talk about progress! There may be no accounting for taste, but you can thank these reproducible formats for the very existence of the notion of pop music.

Listening Test: It’s music tech week at Gizmodo.

Ian had a bad habit of returning stuff too often, according to Amazon, so they suspended his account. When he went online to manage his Kindle, he couldn’t get access. Then, he discovered he couldn’t even buy new books—half of the reason the Kindle is a superior ebook reader is the fact you can download any book, anytime, anywhere—leaving him with a semi-bricked device.

Ian did manage to successfully appeal to the benevolent gods of Amazon, explaining it was only defective merchandise he sent back, and got his account reinstated. With the warning that they could kick him out again at any time if his return rate goes back up.

That’s a pretty excellent threat, I have to say: If you don’t keep the broken merchandise we send you, we’re going to remotely break your $US359 reader. Ah, life in the digital age. I guess that’s the karmic balance to rampant file-sharing: We don’t actually own anything we buy anymore. [Mobileread and ChannelWeb via Consumerist]