The Rational Response Squad have lost their YouTube account, which is the account that we've been posting videos with ever since we lost ours. Apparently "Creation Science Evangelism Ministries" had been submitting false DMCA copyright requests and after RRS came to their defense, they were banned. For all of the details about this issue visit the homepage of http://rationalresponders.com.

Though looking through the RRS website, I can't really say I'm compelled to take them too seriously:

Those who know me well know I am generally not cocky, but after all that I have accomplished over the last 5 days, I can state with accuracy that those who claim I am the man, are in fact accurate. I am unable to discuss the conditions in which we have been returned to youtube (for now). So don't expect an answer there.

As recently reported on Slashdot, Apple, in its infinite wisdom, has added a checksum to the iPod database apparently to restrict non-iTunes products (like Amarok via libgpod) from having the ability to add music. To me this sounds pretty familiar. This is the same thing they did to iTunes 4.5 to make it harder for other apps to read off their DAAP shares, they changed it again in iTunes 7; open source apps are still unable to read iTunes 7 DAAP shares.

But there's better news on this iPod front.

From #gtkpod today:

wtbw: okay guys
wtbw: i think we're done.
wtbw: let me code something just to check

[30 minutes later]

wtbw: can i hear a fuck yeah?
wtbw: works for both mine and xamphears :>

wtbw suggested donations from thankful users go to Cancer Research UK.

Original iPod lockout story

The latest iPods have a cryptographic "checksum" in their song databases that prevents third-party applications from synching with the portable music players. This means that iPods can no longer be used with operating systems where iTunes doesn't exist -- like Linux, where gtkpod and Amarok are common free tools used by iPod owners to load their players.

...

The new hardware limits the number of potential customers for Apple's products, adding engineering cost to a device in order to reduce its functionality. It's hard to understand why Apple would do this, but the most likely explanations are that Apple wants to be sure that competitors can't build their own players to load up iPods -- now that half of the major labels have gone DRM free, it's conceivable that we'd get a Rhapsody or Amazon player that automatically loaded the non-DRM tracks they sold you on your iPod (again, note that this has nothing to do with preventing piracy -- this is about preventing competition with the iTunes Store).

It won't be the first time Apple has rejigged iTunes/iPod to lock out competitors: back when Real built a DRM player for its own music that would run on an iPod, Apple threatened to sue them and engineered a firmware update to break their code (again, nothing to do with fighting piracy). This is the soul of anti-competitiveness: Real made code that iPod owners could use to get more legal use out of their iPods, Apple threatened to sue them for endangering their monopoly over delivering iPod software.