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The Day The Music Died: Windows Media and DRM
SampleMinded writes "The Guardian reports on an early glimpse of what a DRM controlled future looks like. Imagine backing up your files, reformatting your hard drive, then copying the files back over only to find your music no longer works. It happened to this guy. Now That's what I call Xperience!"
it did sound like updateing the licenses for the "new" computer was pretty simple.
What I don't understand is the reason the files could be "re-licensed" was because they were legit in the first place. Well.... isn't this true for any copy? (at some point down the line it was legit)
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iTunes is actually just SoundJam MP. Apple licensed it and modified the look/functionality a bit. So, just get SoundJam MP for Windows (if it exists).
I was very happy about this - I run OS X fulltime, and was recently given one of the original Creative Nomad 6G MP3 jukeboxes. The bundled software was SoundJam MP, but for OS9. I hooked up the Nomad (USB, ugh), fired up iTunes, and it recognized it right away and I could drag/drop MP3s from my library to it.
But what if they had paid for them? Even a trivial amount like 25 cents adds up extremely quick. At least in their case, though, they still have the files. Hard drives fail.. the Windows Registry can be corrupted.. what then? Do you re-purchase all the files you've already bought once?
This should be yet another compelling reason to dump Windows in favor of Linux on your PC's.
* I can't feel too sorry for anyone using Windows Media Player Spyware.. Is it really Microsoft's business that I spend a large part of my work day writing code and listening to (legal) mp3 rips of my Ozzy Osbourne cd's?
By any chance, are you in your in your mid- to late- twenties? Many people stop getting into new music in that timeframe, and have been for 25-30 years.
Gawd, ain't it the truth.
It's disturbing me, but after college it's really difficult to get exposed to new music. The death of napster doesn't help.
On the other hand, I think the late-90s/early-2000s might've been a particularly soso time for new music. On the radio, I still here the same songs I heard played in the gym in 1997, along with what to me sounds like pretty anonymous modern R+B. Other electronica stuff I find interesting, but genre-wise it's all firmly planted in the 90s.
Sometimes I really wonder how the hell my cd collection got as big as it did (it's not even that big, like 300 give or take 50)
And more often these days, new albums I buy are pretty big dissapointments. From N.E.R.D. to the new Alanis.
I really miss the party rap of the early 1990s, pre-gangsta. That was good stuff to dance to.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
I have been told, and I believe even read in dead-tree publications, that the reason the DivX plan died was that people were creeped out by having to dial someone up and transfer information. Even with the *promise* of anonymity, this is guaranteed to scare some people away, since they worry "What if?" (Like "What if the company goes bust and they sell their database to someone that doesn't make the same promise?" or "What if they get hacked and someone takes my credit card number or personal viewing habits?")
Add into this that much of media innovation and format decisions are apparently driven by the porn production industry, and the reason for media without a tether to home base becomes more clear. No one wanted to buy a DivX disc that phoned home to validate and no porn movie maker really wanted to go that route because they know their audience.
Having to phone home has got to be the Achilles' Heel for this kind of stuff. I sure as hell don't want it, and I imagine most people would feel the same way, even if they aren't watching dirty movies.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
There isn't much of a problem, really. If it works real bad, it will be abandoned in the end, one way or another. The Soviet Union was based on communism (a nice idea at least), turned out to be some twisted form of it with corrupted leaders and massive spying (with Vodka), and in the end broke down and is now recovering.
The whole DRM thing is based on a nice thought "don't rip off other peoples works". I.e. if you publish your music under a license I need to pay you a fee to own it. But it has gone overboard, for many reasons, and is starting to become a big problem for those who buy their music. I wouldn't be too terribly happy about not being able to take a CD over to a friend, the car, or with me on a holiday. Neither would I be terribly happy about getting spied upon.
Part of this is certain companies having bad visions (and trying to "resuce" their old ways of revenue instead of comming up with new ones), but the other part is that a lot of people don't mind stealing software and entertainment (music/movies). If you sit with a bunch of movies and mp3s on your harddisk that you did not pay for, consider that.
Hopefully this whole thing will go defunct in the end (I won't rip with WMA to begin with, I prefer ogg at the moment, but only because of the sound quality) and give rise to a new and better way of sharing and making a profit.
Your comment about tiny text made me wonder - could a user unable to read the EULA (because of the type font size) call up a software company and ask for them to read them the EULA out loud? Is this not a reasonable accomodation to a common disability (inability to read 6pt type, or whatever is used)? Is there some reading disability that would make it impossible to read and understand something presented only one line at a time (because of a really small scroll window)?
Most EULA dialogs I've seen have been very limited in functionality - no chance to, say, copy the EULA text into a program and change the font size. That being said, they usually appear to be in about ten-point type. This is much better than the font that used to be used on the break-this-seal-to-agree envelopes. (Which I actually had to pull out a magnifying glass to read)
and it happening to the general masses is a very very good thing. The more this stuff pisses off journalists, writers, average joe the better...
Me? I rip everything to mp3 with lame and the proper settings to get the absolute best copy I can get. (I dont use OGG and probably never will because my car stereo,audiotron and 2 portable devices never will play OGG. No DRM crap to worry about, no mysterious "licenses" or other crap needed.. and finally I use a non-bloated fast responding media player.. it's call winamp, freeamp(or Zinf now) and XMMS. winamp os starting to get bloated so all windows boxen I touch get Zinf instead now.. and linux boxes get either zinf or the default XMMS install.
Anyways, DRM cant and wont bother anyone that makes sure they know what they are using and doing. As it is easily avoided without causing any discomfort. Non-techies? it's gonna bite them in the ares and bite them hard... and I hope that it start biting people at a rapid rate... that's the ONLY way to get the word out...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Certainly nothing to do with punitive prices for cds, right?? 22+ freakin' Euros for a CD where I come from.
Why is it that CDs are waaay more expensive than cassettes to buy, yet cassettes are way more expensive to produce in terms of materials, complexity, etc ...??
Let me answer - they charge what they do, because they can, plain and simple .... people are slowly wising up & sales figures are falling. The free market sux, eh?
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
I would also suggest using Winamp. It has a built in decoder that allows files such as .wma .wav or other sound formats to be converted to .mp3, which is one of the unregulated file formats. Best of all, winamp is free at www.winamp.com
I personally like it better as a player as well.
MS doesn't want to tell this to people, but it obviously must be archiving your list of songs on their servers somewhere. Remember the EULA of WMP that says you give MS the right to 'spy' on what you are playing? I think this feature might be the reason why that clause was there. They know that you had played that song in WMP once before.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Usable in *pure* DOS. Real, for-really, boot from the bottom up, no Windows, no VM, no linux, the real thing DOS. :) Meaning it's gotta have user-settable IRQ/DMA. If it does SB16-compatible, that's usually good enough.
Tho thanks for reminding me about VDMSound (and McGill, I was trying to remember the name of the place yesterday when Waterloo was the subject of slashdot's scrutiny, and couldn't come up with it to save my life!)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?