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Jeff Green used to work at Games For Windows magazine before taking a sweet gig at EA , but that little fact won’t silence his criticism of the DRM found in Command and Conquer 4 . He tweeted white-hot rage when, as everyone on the Internet predicted, this “always-on” nonsense worked as intended, and prevented a law-abiding citizen from playing his game. Here are the tweets, hombres: It’s safe to say we’ve been fairly clear in, well, hating all this DRM. It’s very easy to say, “It’s 2010, who doesn’t have their computer constantly connected to the Internet?” You’d be correct, but that’s not the issue. The issue is that people’s Internet connections aren’t reliable enough to require gamers to be 100 percent online for the duration of a gaming session. Your Wi-Fi could go down. (Mine goes down like five times per day. Thanks, D-Link.) You could have Comcast . There could be cosmic rays . The point is, your Internet connection isn’t stable enough to work well with this particular form of DRM. Now, what Mr. Green brings up, that perhaps if we didn’t look at C&C 4 (or Assassin’s Creed II or whatever) as a “single-player game” we wouldn’t not expect to be online. After all, World of Warcraft is an online game, and the second you’re disconnected, you’re booted from the game. No one flips out over that, right? But the very idea that a fairly prominent EA man has publicly questioned the integrity of this type of DRM means all of our complaining is affecting the right people. Keep it up!

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EA fellow bitten by his company’s own DRM in Command and Conquer 4, questions the sense of it all

Heartened by the popularity of all its various forms of DRM and DLC, EA has decided to implement even further segmentation of its games. Now you’ll have the demo, the “premium demo,” the “full game” and simultaneous or post-release DLC. Gamers love segmentation! Analyst Michael Pachter reports on EA’s new strategy : Think about Battlefield 1943 as the prototype, so a full (but short) game experience for a reasonable price. At the same time, an expanded version of the game will be under development for release as a packaged product. Well now, let’s not jump to conclusions. This, after all, was in a way how Portal was. Short, low-priced, and as it turned out, harbinger for a much larger game further on. But is that all there is to it? The truth is that Portal truly was a complete game. Can EA really convince anyone that whatever they sell for $15 ahead of a big retail release is complete in any way? Seems unlikely, especially considering how DLC these days is essentially content that could have been in the retail release but was modular enough to sell on the side. I put “full game” in quotes in the first paragraph because it seems to me that truly full games are rarely released these days; pieces of the cookie are broken off until they have the bare minimum for a retail package, and then they sell you the rest of the cookie piecemeal. Obviously there is the bottom line to consider. I can’t blame EA if making medium-sized, semi-complete games and then tarting them up with DLC is a winning strategy. If they’re making money and making games, that’s fine. But gamers lose out when games are considered only as products, the same way a TV show, movie, or book will suffer if created only with “net positive dollars” the only objective in mind.

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EA: How about we sell extra-long demos as DLC?

Apparently it’s illegal in Canada to copy music from a CD you bought to an iPod (or whatever). It’s simply not allowed, even if you’re not breaking any DRM in the process. (In the U.S., it’s illegal to copy a DVD to your computer’s hard drive because you have to circumvent the copy protection in the process.) Solution? Some sort of levy, which would ensure that “artists” make money even though you’re not re-buying their music. The deal now is that an MP up there wants to introduce a CAN$75 “iPod levy” that would effectively legalize copying music from a CD you bought to your iPod. The levy has just been proposed, but if the Canadian legislature is anything like its American counterpart it’s going to be a little while before anyone even raises the issue again. The idea of a levy isn’t new, per se—there’s already a levy on blank media (CD-Rs and the like) that supposedly help to make sure that “artists” get paid. (My hunch is that it goes right back to the record label’s coffers, but whatever.) Granted, you could be buying blank media to backup your PowerPoint presentation, so it’s not a 100 percent fool-proof thing, but it neatly solves the problem in a way that prevents people from having to re-think the entire concept of copyright in the 21st century. This so-called iPod levy could also negatively affect people who buy iPod but don’t put any music on them—people like me, for example. I have an iPod touch and I dare you to find one song on there. (I pretty much just use it for like 10 minutes a day to check WoW.com before going to bed.) Why should I have to pay CAN$75, which is like US$4,000 these days, to subsidize other people’s habits? Yes, I understand that the number of people who buy iPods and then don’t put any music on there is quite small, but I needed to fulfill my daily complaint quota. Let’s turn it around, make it local to our fair American readers. Let’s say Congress, for whatever reason, creates and passes a law that says you’re 100 percent allowed to copy DVDs (legally bypassing the DRM) that you own to your hard drive, but that from now own all commercial DVDs come with a $10 tax on them to cover the “losses,” so to speak. Would you go for that? Flickr

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The $75 iPod levy that will solve all of Canada’s problems

Since we’re your go-to source for complaining about DRM (now on CNN !), I figure we should mention the latest development regarding EA’s Battlefield: Bad Company 2 . Dice, the game’s developer’s, have removed SecuROM DRM from both the retail version of the game as well as the digitally distributed one (i.e. Steam). Why a Steam game even needs SecuROM in the first place (it’s merely a disc check, so…) is a question I cannot answer. It’s probably like a contractual thing or something. This comes by way of the game’s latest patch, which went live for the retail version—the Steam version is still on the way. Other things of note? Not really, just the average bug-fixes and UI fine tuning. In other news, yes, Inter beat Chelsea ! That made my day, for real.

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EA removes SecuROM DRM from Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Spring Design this morning announced that its dual screen Alex eReader will be available online today ( the rumors were true! ) for $399. Customers can thus start pre-ordering the Android-based multimedia e-reader, which supports eBooks in EPUB, PDF, HTML and TXT formats. Spring Design says due to localization of international versions with partners, pre-orderded units placed on the Web in the U.S., will be shipped no later than mid-April. The Alex eReader features a 6″ EPD screen and a full color 3.5″ Android-based touchscreen LCD. The device supports full Web browsing over WiFi, allowing users to surf the Web, watch videos and communicate with online contacts while simultaneously reading and downloading books. Users can also use a number Google Android applications. Alex connects to Google’s bookstore with over one million titles, and other book stores that support Adobe DRM. The Alex eReader weighs 11 ounces and measures 4.7″ by 8.9″ and less than a half inch deep. Users may add their own content or download content to the microSD card offering expansion of user libraries up to 32GB. The Alex may be updated over WiFi and USB 2.0 and comes with headphones, AC/USB power connector and a padded cover. Check out the video below to see the device in action:

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Alex eReader now on sale in the U.S. for $399 a pop, starts shipping mid-April

I was pretty bullish on the One Laptop Per Child program for quite some time, and even participated in the ‘Buy One Give One’ program. I recognize that OLPC represents a long-term project, and that the fruits of that project are not likely to be visible for years. While we’re waiting, we can watch One Kindle Per Child , an initiative from Worldreader.org to improve literacy in Africa through the use of Amazon Kindle e-readers. I’m extremely skeptical of this project. I forwarded the story to my friend Rich, who grew up in Africa, and his immediate response was “Well intentioned people who are really good at X look around and say, ‘how can X solve this problem?’, rather than saying ‘what is needed to solve this problem?’” Like Rich, I’m not convinced that the Amazon Kindle is the right solution to the problem of literacy in Africa, or anywhere else. The Kindle is a closed platform. It is a fragile device, and not the kind of thing anyone in Africa is likely going to be able to repair. Even though it has a long-lasting battery, it still requires electricity to charge that battery. And don’t get me started on DRM, or vendor lock-in, or walled gardens, or any of the other subtle gotchas associated with a proprietary device like the Kindle. Rich reminded me of the Literacy Bridge project, which aims to address the problem of literacy in Africa through similar means, but with a decidedly different fundamental starting point: The model at LiteracyBridge is that the device is durable, so that it can withstand african conditions. It is simple, and local folks are trained in how to repair it. It is powered by regular batteries, so that they can buy them at a local store, which not only ensures that the device remains powered, but contributes to the local economy. They can put their own content on it, which also encourages local economy in recorded books. And of course, there’s still the Peace Corps , and countless traditional teaching opportunities to help address the issues of literacy in Africa and around the world. Technology may be one part of the larger puzzle, but I think that the Worldreader project is profoundly overestimating the value of technology for this problem.

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One Kindle per child: who are they helping?

Exciting news, people who watch TV! CNN will finally go fully HD sometime this spring! This is a great day for news junkies and people who constantly need to be reading a ticker. The network first launched its HD channel two years ago, but only programming emanating from its New York studios were done in HD; Atlanta- and D.C.-based programming was still in boring ol’ SD. But no more! Starting this spring, it’s HD 24 hours a day~! Among the shows that will gain several lines of resolution: Rick’s List with Rick “from the barrio” Sanchez. Sanchez, you’ll recall, challenged East Side Dave (again, whom I interviewed ), from Ron and Fez , to a fight in light of the Shorty Awards Twitter controversy . Dave accepted his challenge, but Mr. Sanchez has been awfully quiet since then. What’s the matter, dogsie, afraid the Davepound knows how to scrap?! Do I have to mention that I wrote two articles for CNN.com, one about the iPad and one about Ubisoft’s DRM ? Well I just did, so there.

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CNN will finally go full HD this spring. Maybe we’ll see Rick Sanchez vs. East Side Dave in 720p?

All the Apple marks are excited about the iPad . Not me, but whatever. What I am excited about, though, is seeing consumers use the items they’ve bought in the manner of their choosing. Say you’ve bought a bunch of books from the Amazon Kindle store. (Don’t tell Devin!) Those books are only “supposed” to work with the Kindle and the various Kindle readers, but with a bit of work you can read them wherever you want—yes, including on your iPad. It’s really not too hard. All you need is the book you want to read on your iPad, unswindle , mobiledrm , and Stanza , which is a program that reads ePub files. It runs on the iPhone and iPod touch—presumably one day it will run on the iPad. If not, well, sorry for wasting your time. OK! 1. Buy your book. I recommend “ The Death of WCW ” by Bryan Alvarez . 2. Download the required software. This includes unswindle, mobiledrm, and maybe the Kindle reader for Windows. 3. Put everything in the same directory, then run unswindle. The Kindle DRM is now gone~! 4. Fire up Stanza, then convert and read away~! That’s it. Enjoy being able to read Kindle books on your iPhone (and maybe iPad one day). Please be aware that Amazon will likely be updating the DRM it uses pretty much every hour on the hour, so don’t get mad when this method suddenly stops working. It’s a cat-and-mouse game because publishers don’t know hot to get on with each other or release books in open standards.

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Wanna read Kindle books on your iPhone (and maybe iPad)? Of course you do~!

Exciting news about Apple’s iTunes LP : apparently it’s a bit of a bust! The fine folks at GigaOM had the foresight to talk to people in the music industry to ask them, six months on, how’s iTunes LP doing? Not so great, is the answer . What went wrong? The first shocking revelation: iTunes LP wasn’t really Apple’s idea in the first place. Makes sense: why would Apple, which all but created the idea of a legal, digital music store, based on selling individual songs (read: not albums) all of a sudden be all, “Hey, albums are cool again. Buy them, and at a huge premium, too. Rather, iTunes LP was pushed by the same record labels that complained enough to get Apple to change from an all-99 cents pricing policy to a flexible pricing policy in exchange for DRM-free music. What happened? A couple things, maybe. One, maybe, after years of getting used to cherry picking what songs they wanted to buy, people are just done with the concept of the album. Not everyone who buys music from iTunes is so into music that they’ll make 1,000-word blog posts defending the album—they just want the latest Lady Gaga song. These people have no interest in full-length albums anymore. Another reason: iTunes LP albums are expensive, both to buy and to create. One source told GigaOM that an iTunes LP album cost something like $50,000-$60,000 to create, and $20ish to buy. And what are you getting, a couple of photos and videos that you may well have found on the band’s Web site? And then there’s not too many iTunes LP albums to begin with! Apple’s probably not too concerned. Again, this whole iTunes LP adventure wasn’t its idea to begin with, so Steve Jobs is probably like, “Whatever, dude, it’s all about the iPad. Don’t talk to me, jerk.” There’s a larger issue, and that’s if the album is dead or not. There was a digital music thing here in New York a few weeks ago, but I was busy playing soccer with the guy from Univision . Questions like “Is the album dead?” were probably debated there. C’est la vie.

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The rise and fall of iTunes LP (cue dramatic music)

When will this nonsense with online DRM stop? Ubisoft’s authentication server s were apparently attacked and therefore offline, but now they’re back . Now EA servers crashed for an hour this morning , locking players out of numerous gamings including Bad Company 2 . This is crazy. DRM isn’t going anywhere but this current implementation simply isn’t stable enough. Suggestions?

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EA servers crash as Ubisoft gets back online