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Zune's Viral DRM Will Violate Creative Commons
lopy writes "Medialoper has noted that Zune's highly touted wireless file sharing will infect otherwise unprotected audio files with proprietary DRM. In cases where users are sharing songs covered by any of the Creative Commons licenses, this would be a clear violation of those license. From the CC FAQ: 'If a person uses DRM tools to restrict any of the rights granted in the license, that person violates the license.' It'll be interesting to see how and if the CC community responds." An anonymous reader wrote in mentioning a post to the Crave blog, relatedly exploring how the Zune stacks up to the iPod.
It's time to sue Microsoft for contibutory and vicarious infringement for doing this. Use the Grokster case as precedent. It's time the pro-DRM side got a taste of their own legal medicine.
Zune accomplishes this amazingly stupid feat by wrapping shared music in a proprietary layer of DRM, regardless of what format the original content may be in. If Microsoft's claims are to be believed, this on-the-fly DRM will be seamless and automatic - which must be some kind of first for Microsoft.
This story should be pulled immediately! Slashdot does not tolerate cheap shots towards Microsoft
The FAQ on the article basically does not allow a person to distribute a creative commons work that has been modified with DRM. Microsoft is doing no such thing. While their software will DRM-ify the song, it is the end user who is using the Zune as the mechanism of distribution. Clearly the works are available without the DRM, as the original user got the song in the first place. This seems to me to be an issue of a transport layer. If you know Microsoft will always DRM, and you try to use this mechanism to distribute CC'd licensed works, then perhaps you are the one who is in violation of the license.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
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Ok let me take a poll
How many people will buy a zune ?
Ok of those select few, how many have CC content they are or were planning to put on the zune ?
Is anyone's hand up? Furthermore, it would be the end users that would violate the CC license, not microsoft. I can violate the licence today with Microsoft Media Player. Why doesn't CC sue microsoft for allowing users to violate the licese that way? Zune just makes it easier to violate the licese CC doesn't have a say and doens't ahve a leagal leg to stand on. The whol anti DRM thing on slashdot has gotten way out of hand. There are many artists who awnt this kind of protection for their music. They are stuggling to make ends meet and tak to fans who tell them they burned copies of their cd's and gave them to all their friends. These bands are on INDEPENDANT labels, not covered by RIAA. Its an option, let people choose to use it or not use it. Microsoft added a feature that previously didn't exist amoung mp3 players and wanted to make sure that no one used it to violate the artists rights. It just means that you will have to distrubute CC licences files some other way, possibly the same way you are doing right now!
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I appologise for not remembering where I saw/heard this but in the last 24 hours I saw a comment that made a lot of sense with regards to the Zune and the 3 day/play rule. This feature is not meant as a convenience of the user so they can share their music with others. Its a feature of the marketing people so they can virally encourage you to buy more.
Imagine a bunch of kids at school. The first one buys a track from the Zune store, shares it around to all his/her friends, creates interest in the cool tune. And then *poof* the music vanishes. So what do all the friends do? The head off to the Zune store to buy buy buy.
From that perspective the feaure makes a great lot of sense.
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The original source quoted is Forbes Magazine's article with direct quotes from Microsoft spokespersons, however, in reading that article it seems to me to imply that only a subset of songs bought from MS's version of the ITunes store will be available for sharing and it implies that any other music simply won't be able to be shared at all, including Creative Commons works, although the wording lends itself to ambiguity.
or the **AA would have had to sue the hell out of them. The ultimate nightmare for a **AA executive is a "college Zune party." A bunch of people get together, swap a ton of music/movies/etc., and leave. No torrents, web servers, or IP addresses to list in a lawsuit or threatening letter to a college administrator. Microsoft would have been guilty of enabling illegal file sharing/IP theft without this DRM wrapper.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
As a former long-time owner of a Sony Minidisc player, I can give you a glimpse of why the hate is so strong here. It's about (what my best friend calls) 'wasted potential.'
Let me give you an idea of what my Minidisc life was like for about 5 years:
The device is capable of so many uses. You can record, you can play, you can run with it, you can hook it up to a million sound systems, etc. etc. etc. But the software is designed with keen observation from the lawyers in the company. Many of the features that you, in your sweet heart, KNOW are there are disabled. Recording and then copying are severely restricted. Getting music onto the damn thing takes the effort equivalent to climbing a mountain.
Long story short, it's a gallant horse with strong legs in a tight and painful harness. Severely limited in its movement, the animal withers.
The wireless component of the Zune give it immense potential to dethrone the Ipod. But, we all know that DRM and MS's history will give us a scenario much like the one I consistently experienced as a Minidisc fan.
That's why I have an Ipod.
The RIAA is not a law enforcement group, hell they're not even part of the government. They can't send you to jail. They can call the Feebs on you or take you to court seeking damages. That's it.
The **AAs love how people think that they're law enforcement. They encourage people to think that by wearing those stupid "FBI" knockoff "**AA" windbreakers.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
They're called statutory damages. You know, like the RIAA sues for. You don't think they are claiming that the damage to them caused by someone uploading a single song is really $150,000 do you?
Ah, just like that disclaimer (almost verbatim) protected p2p vendors from getting their pants sued off. Oh wait: it didn't. Oh well, maybe MS need to just obey the law that they're so keen on getting others to obey.
Pirate Party UK
No kidding. I am so sick of Slashdot's pro-microsoft anti-apple bias!
Why is it, that on blogs, in comments, and many other places, I see this exact bahvior ascribed to Apple (adds DRM to .mp3s, has "proprietary format" conversion) when they've never done any such thing - and when Microsoft does it, it's no big deal?
Umm... Well, its no big deal with Apple because they don't put any DRM on any MP3s and never have.
Their iTunes AAC files (which you purchase from their site) do have fairplay DRM on them but MP3s they are not. They are a completley different file format and are a different beast when it comes to lossey codecs.
You can rip CDs all day long with iTunes to MP3s or AACs (I don't know why you would want to rip to AAC but you can) and not get a bit of DRM on those files.
Heck you can even rip to Apple Loseless mp4 without DRM. Its just that only quicktime, iTunes, and iPods only have the patent codec for them, but I can share a MP4 with my friends all day long and they can make copies and put it on their iPods if they wanted.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
From the articles I've read so far (TFA for this story has been Slashdotted), it sounds like Zune will add DRM to files that are wirelessly shared with other Zune players, not to the DRM-free files you transfer from the Zune software (WMP 11?) to the Zune. Adding DRM to your shared, but intitially DRM-free, files may sound like a crap move, but do you think any player (including the iPod) can get away with allowing direct player-to-player copying without adding DRM? This would be similar to file "sharing" like P2P, but on a smaller scale. In the paranoid RIAA's eyes, people could be adding copyrighted music to their players even if they didn't own the original CD.
But can you make a direct transfer from iPod to iPod? Can you easily transfer a DRM-free MP4 file from your iPod to all of your friends' computers? I'd be surprised if the RIAA allowed this.TO START
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Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...