In this opening salvo, I will reprise the technical terms and history of DRM and thereafter I will try to keep you abreast of the issues for computer users in general and free software in particular. Hopefully, I will in fact be chronicling the death throws of DRM.

Despite the recent announcement of "DRM-free" music tracks by Apple and Amazon.com, Digital Rights Management (DRM) is not about to go away. At least, that's the main conclusion of a report, "Digital Rights Management Update," made available this week by the market research firm In-Stat.

With heartfelt grief we announce the sudden death of Thiemo Seufer (ths) in a tragic car accident on December 26th.

Adding to the first official protest, against Norway's sudden Yes vote on OOXML, now we have news from ChannelRegister that there will be a second complaint filed, this one about the UK's sudden about-face:

At this week's Digital Music Forum, lawyers managing digital rights for Microsoft's Zune music download site and RealNetworks' Rhapsody said that they too believe digital rights management to be more of a headache than an asset.

One of the greatest Linux Advocates alive today, at least in my mind, has nearly worked himself to death. And no, I am not kidding. He came close to dying. this is submitted ONLY to let the community know how he is doing and to show you that his sense of humor is still intact. The community outreach has been tremendous so take this only as a report...nothing more. And Bless The HeliOS Project.

The Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) once again made an epic appearance. This time, it happened at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics... The Screen of Death is not exclusive to Windows. Other operating systems also display special types of error messages when fatal exception occurs.

“I’d be glad to help tilt lotus into into the death spiral. I could do it Friday afternoon but not Saturday. I could do it pretty much any time the following week.”–Brad Silverberg, Microso

Geospatial Digital Rights Mangement Reference Model (GeoDRM RM)

In March, 2007 the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC®) membership approved the Geospatial Digital Rights Management Reference Model (GeoDRM RM), an abstract specification for the management of digital rights in the area of geospatial data and services.