FairUse4WM Breaks Windows DRM

An anonymous reader writes "FairUse4WM, according to engadget, "can be used to strip Windows Media DRM 10 and 11". What does the slashdot community think of this development in the ongoing cat-and-mouse game going on between big media and what is available online?"

Comments

Follow-up; Cory Doctorow on DRM at MSFT

[Noksagt]

They've already written a follow-up: An open letter to Microsoft: Why you shouldn't kill FairUse4WM.

This whole thing reminds me of Cory Doctorow's DRM and MSFT: A Product No Customer Wants.

Re:Actually hope they fix this

[Anonymous Coward]

The iTunes music store is quite clear that if you accidently delete your iTunes downloads, you're SOL. There are plenty of accounts of people who've lost iTunes downloads who've had Apple tell them to repay to redownload or fuck off.

Plus, once you've gone past five times that Apple's decided your computer is different, you also lose all your music. Gone. Locked out.

Apple is just as evil as the rest of them. At least the "rent music" places are telling you up front that you're just renting and that you can lose the ability to play your downloads at the drop of a hat.

Re:Headline incorrect.

[acousticiris]

Let me speak to the "stupid enough to buy DRM encumbered content" market...since I *was* stupid enough.

I subscribed to Yahoo! Music Unlimited, upgraded my Windows Media Player, installed all of the patches and purchased a brand spanking new Creative Zen Vision last year.
The whole setup process was about two hours after the litany of patches and firmware upgrades, but it worked...actually very well...
Then one day, about 7 months later, it failed.

For no explainable reason other than "DRM is garbage", my player decided to play only the first song downloaded, and then claim that every other song was unlicensed thereafter. It didn't matter which track, the minute it skipped to the next one, everything was unplayable that was DRM'd.

You can imagine how abundantly helpful Yahoo!'s tech support was (not at all). So I cancelled my subscription.

Lets add up my total costs:
1-year Subscription (at the time $4.99/month, now $9.99): $59.88
New media player for subscription content: $399.99 (somewhere in that range)
Number of tracks effectively "rented" for seven months: ~150
Total Cost "the day the music died": $459.87 or >$3.00/tracks I didn't get to keep.

Sure, I factored the player into the cost and maybe that's not fair since I still use it for videos and music (and I would buy it again, today, if given a choice), but the fact remains that I had to buy a new player because only a select few are subscription compatible.
I won't resubscribe now that this tool is available because my guess is that Microsoft will have this hole patched before the week is out (Here's betting they don't wait until "Patch Tuesday" for this update, we all know where their priorities are).

So I have access to less music (legally) "at my finger-tips", but at least I get to enjoy the music on all of my PCs, my stereo, my two players, and wherever the heck else I can adapt the unencumbered tracks to.
It's amazing to me that something that was "standard" 100 years ago (unencrypted/encumbered music) is now the first feature I look for in music I buy.