Gateway to Ship PCs with Pre-Installed DRM Music Files

Captain Chad writes "News.com has an article about Gateway's decision to bundle Pressplay's music service with its PCs. Of interest is the fact that 2000 popular songs will come pre-installed, helping reduce download time for those of us with modems." I wonder how much Pressplay is paying for this privilege. All sorts of interesting legal wrinkles here: you're buying a computer which contains data that you cannot legally access.

Comments

So this is how it works:

[DeadSea]

1. You buy a computer.
2. It has an OS and software installed.
3. It also has a folder called "music".
4. You browse into that folder and you see see songs like "Britney's Latest.drm".
5. You say, "Boy I'd like to hear that!", so you open it.
6. They player comes up and says "You don't own this yet, I can't play it, would you like to buy it?"
7. Being cheap you open another player and try to play the file but you can't because the file is encrypted.
8. Frustrated, you go back and buy it.
9. The music player sends your payment info and downloads a decryption key.
10. The music now plays, but only on that machine with that player.
11. You caputer the digital out of your sound card, rip the song to mp3, send it to your portable, and put it on the internet.

Re:why?

[Sloppy]

This isn't a Gateway gimmick for increasing their products' sales by making them more attractive. Of course, they are going to spin it ant put it in the best light and make it sound like a feature, but that's not what it is.

Gateway's insight is this: "Hard disks are getting big, and we are shipping computers with a bunch of unused disk space. Why not fill that space with advertisements (or anything else that a third party will pay us to put there)?"