Obama's International DRM Embarrassment

Obema recently visited Europe and gave the Queen of England a gift of an iPod and some DVDs for Mr. Brown. Both Against Monopoly and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF writes "President Obama reportedly gave an iPod, loaded with 40 show tunes, to England's Queen Elizabeth II as a gift. Did he violate the law when he did so? " Since this is a debatable subject, the EFF concluded: "You know your copyright laws are broken when there is no easy answer to this question." Clearly copyright is broken; but this story is a bit deeper and even more embarrassing than reported.

Reports also surfaced that Obama gave Mr. Brown DVDs that were incompatible with British DVD players. The irony is that the US quest for the use of DRM to protect so-called intellectual property has resulted in an embarrassing international incident that points out how ridiculous DRM and copyright have become when innocent gift giving in the name of world peace becomes a potential "violation" of law!

Quipster writes: "The Region-1 coded DVD’s used in North America, are incompatible with the differently coded DVD’s used in Britain. Poor Gordon Brown not only taxed at the rare opportunity to enjoy a flick with his poor vision at that, but then the additional knock at getting the ugly message at the start of the movie, “wrong region.”

The irony is that Barack Obama likes to surround himself with the most talented and up to date people, not to mention, technological wizards. Ineptly, they were unable to foresee the rather blatant issue of viewing compatibility across the pond."

Another exhibition of arrogant stupidity by our clueless self-serving politicians.