Two noteworthy dj stories popped up on the BBC radar today. In the first, English drum and bass dj Grooverider was arrested on his way to a gig in Dubai. Apparently carrying any marijuana into the the United Arab Emirates qualifies as smuggling drugs and will result in a 4 year mandatory sentence. Note to self, international djing is not all champagne and limo rides to clubs overflowing with models. It also includes, among many other things, the following risks:
1) getting charged 1.4 million Euros for playing “pirated” mp3s.
2) having the Brazilian police switch off the lights, pull a world famous dj out of the dj booth and put another one in his place because the club did not pay taxes on his dj fee.
3) getting 4 years in a middle eastern prison for carrying a joint.
In the 2nd story a San Francisco company called DoubleTwist has claimed their free software can easily crack Itunes DRM and transfer songs to anything including Facebook, PSP, and Sony Devices. That’s good news because the Itunes music store is a great place to find new tunes. Sadly they admit the process of “liberating your iTunes® music purchases” results in a “small quality loss” to the already lossy 128kp AAC files aimed at consumer buyers. The program is also only for windows, which seems a strange platform choice for such a product. None-the-less, score one for the anti-DRM crowd.
