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Microsoft Preps 'Janus' Music Copy-Prevention Scheme
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft is expected to unveil copy-protection software this summer that will for the first time give portable digital music players access to rented tunes from all-you-can-eat subscription services -- a development that some industry executives believe will shake up the online music business." Janus is the Roman god of doorways, gates, passages, preventing people from copying music, etc.
Pay for time limited, rental media? Has Circuit City's DIVX fiasco taught them nothing?
If there were a demand for such an item I can see them working on it but the media companies try these silly schemes that have no consumer interest. Naturally they'll end up somehow blaming P2P for this system's inevitable failure.
Trolling is a art,
A two-faced god that claims to stand between the primitive and civilization, but is in fact just a product of the primitive superstition of a decrepit culture.
Perfect.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
I read the article this morning, and sent to some friends. I have multiple problems with it.
..."
1) I don't want to "rent" my music. I want to buy.
2) I don't want my music in crappy WMA format.
3) The tinfoil hat wearer in me sees this as a way for the music/software industries to indoctrinate the next generation of consumers with the idea that you don't "own" anything.
As the sidebar in the article says "If fans of iPod-like devices can be convinced to drop the idea of owning song files, they could shift to paying a subscription fee for ongoing access
Pass.
www.robot-invasion.com smart-assed political news, humor, and commentary
Before MP3s were Satan, I had a stereo system (hi-fi for us old folks) that could easily "rip" CDs, records, or tapes to cheap portable media (blank tapes). It didn't seem to be an issue then...
I would actually be very interested in an all-you-can-eat music subscription, provided it gave me files in the MP3 format. I have an MP3 player in my house, office, car, and person, but I don't have a Janus player anywhere!
Stop spending all your money trying to stop me from sharing stuff, just sell me stuff I want.
:wq
Steve Jobs knew this from the outset. Accorting to a Fortune article, he went to the labels and said "Look, we have some really smart people who know this drm stuff down cold, and you can't stop it. What makes it worse, is that once you have the key you can unlock every door". He used this as the justification for an uncomplicated scheme.
Getting hacked would therefore come as no big surprise to Apple/Jobs. But when you add it up:
Unlimited burns + no expiration + multiple devices + multiple computers = Not worth the trouble.
The iTunes model is so open, there is little reason to hack it. Of those who would want to, you then have a subset of those with the skills to do so, and you end up with an insignificant number.
The new MS model, with an expiration date, screams for a hack. But then again, there are a lot of time limited software demos, and I don't suppose that anyone tries to hack those...