Militant Geek Custom Shirts

Ah, Photoshop. Whether its making fast food burgers look thick, past prime pop stars look thin, or putting men on the moon its a tool that has given us so much. Those people who are able to wield that tool so handily we’ll call heroes.

Wordans’ contributor crazyrig understands this, which is why he’s created the ‘Photoshop Hero’ design. Unlike a lot of Tee shops Wordans allows you to take the designs you like and make the shirt you want - want a little something off to the right instead of dead center? You got it. Want it dead center over your crotch with an XXL shirt? You’ve got that too - while they’ll give you the shirt you want they can’t give you taste. And if you’re not ready to unleash you’re little Tommy Hilfiger on the world (something that, incidentally, is considered a lewd offense in 36 states and 4 Canadian provinces) they’ve also got pre-arranged shirts starting at around $19.

Buy the Militant Geek Circumvent DRM Shirt starting at $19.99

Media Rights Technology, or MRT - a DRM vendor, has one of the most unique sales strategies we’ve seen. They are threatening Adobe and Real with lawsuits for failing to buy their ‘technology’. The original Forbes article describes that the rationale is a bit wonky (surprise, surprise):

MRT and Bluebeat said the failure to use an available copyright protection solution contravenes the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits the manufacture of any product or technology designed to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work or protects the rights of copyright owners.

Or, as Cory Doctorow says over on Boing Boing:

since the DMCA makes it illegal to break DRM, companies with broken DRM have to buy someone else’s DRM.

If those companies fail to comply MRT is seeking between $200-$2500 for each product distributed and/or sold. The strategy doesn’t make much sense to me. Of course, if a company is slimy enough to engage in DRM this probably a perfectly ‘rational’ approach to sales.

In other news HBO has decided that the problems with DRM aren’t its ‘presumed guilty before proven innocent’ approach or consumer rights crippling features. Instead, HBO surmises that everything would be ok with a name change. Apparently ‘rights-mangement’ has come to have negative associations in customer’s minds (wonder why) and so its time for a bit of marketing. The new warm and fuzzy name: Digital Consumer Enablement, or DCE.

HBO would also like to remind consumers that War is Peace, Freedom is Strength, and Ignorance is Strength.