adobe

As we mentioned briefly yesterday -- we should never forget that Adobe used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to have a Russian programmer, Dmitry Sklyarov, arrested and imprisoned. His "crime"? Distributing a product designed to remove locks from eBooks so that they could be fully used like regular books.

This year, we've seen an attempt by Canada to introduce its own DMCA, with harsher penalties than the draconian US law. Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa states, the education provisions "[t]urn librarians into locksmiths" by requiring that they expire their digital materials after no more than five days.

One DRM activist, Zane writes on our blog "The DMCA does not protect creators. These overstepping boundaries are a burden to creativity, expression, culture, innovation, and the consumer."

Ah yes, Adobe, bastions of the creative world, and pain in the neck to all. Currently, as always, Adobe are up to some pretty dirty tricks. We're already seeing millions of users stuck with their deliberately crippled software -- Adobe Acrobat, Flash Player. Now comes Adobe AIR hand in hand with another sad story about the BBC:

The BBC has chosen AIR for its iPlayer download application for GNU/Linux and Mac OS X -- despite both these platforms being able to run a variety of free software applications for handling video, and despite the BBC's efforts to bring a DRM-free version of iPlayer to the iPhone and iPod Touch -- devices running the same operating system core as desktop and laptop Macintosh computers.

The solution? Unsurprisingly is free software...

• Gnash and Swfdec provide alternatives to Adobe Flash
• There are a variety of free PDF readers for all the major platforms.