Microsoft DRM To Get Even Tighter

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Microsoft DRM To Get Even Tighter

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Thursday September 21, 2006 @01:51AM from the schmair-use dept.

Toreo asesino writes, "Microsoft is tightening the screws on their up & coming DRM platform. First, Windows Media Player 11 removes the right to move music from one machine to another. According to their website, WMP11 'does not permit you to back up your media usage rights (previously known as licenses).' Worse, if you rip your own CDs and the 'Copy protect music' option is turned on, WMP11 will require you to 'connect to a Microsoft Web page that explains how to restore your rights a limited number of times.'" The Inquirer has an even more jaundiced take on Microsoft's turn of the thumbscrew.

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Ahem... by tomstdenis · 2006-09-21 01:53 · Score: 5, Informative

You don't have to use WMP to rip CDs you know?

This is really a moot issue. I mean I hate Microsoft and all that they are, but seriously, just don't use WMP.

Tom

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1. Re:Ahem... by omeg · 2006-09-21 01:59 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  I don't think that it's really an option to say to the users of WMP that they should switch. Afterall, most people who do are casual users who would simply like things to work without thinking about "better alternatives". The kind that uses Internet Explorer.
  
  If Microsoft can get their DRM in with those people, it won't be long before it'll be used on an even larger scale. Instead of fighting to stop DRM from ever seeing the light of day (already a lost cause), you will be fighting to get its large scale usage abolished. And these people who use WMP: they're not going to switch. Ever. Microsoft should just stop using these tactics.
2. Re:Ahem... by Tim+C · 2006-09-21 02:31 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Also, it would be nice if one could use WMP to rip CDs without crippling DRM.
  
  I've not used WiMP 11, but in WiMP 10 go to Tools -> Rip Music then either select mp3, or uncheck the "copy protect music" checkbox.
  
  I can't confirm that this works for WiMP 11, but from the linked article:
  
  If the file is a song you ripped from a CD with the Copy protect music option turned on
  which implies that it can't be disabled.
  
  --
  It's official. Most of you are morons.
3. Re:Ahem... by Anonymous Coward · 2006-09-21 02:38 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  just checked on by beta 2 version & its in the same place & not even on by default !! bit of a non story i think..
4. Re:Ahem... by Deathlizard · 2006-09-21 02:55 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Also, it would be nice if one could use WMP to rip CDs without crippling DRM.
  
  You can rip CD's in WMP10 without DRM. In Fact, DRM is turned off by Default.
  
  go to Tools -> Options -> Rip Music to see the settings. It also Does MP3.
  
  I've never used WMP for ripping but I know the college students use it on their PC's all the time, and when their hard drive crashes we simply copy the music over to their new drive with no problem.
  
  As for WMP11, On the Vista RC1 machine I'm testing here, it looks like their adopting the same default settings as 10: WMA, 128KB's, DRM OFF. They also finally support ripping to wav files as well, so now you can convert to your favorite alternate format in a lossless state. The full ripping support is WMA 48-192, WMA Pro 32-192, WMA (VBR) 40-355, WMA (Mathematically Lossless) 470-940, MP3 128-320, and Wav. Of course ths could change by final build, but this is how it's currently setup.
  
  --
  In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
5. Re:Ahem... by jZnat · 2006-09-21 03:08 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Just adding to the consensus that MPlayer owns. I use it to rip DVDs (mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile movie.vob dvd://) for instance. MEncoder is great as well, but I find myself using external codecs (e.g. XviD, LAME, Vorbis) rather than lavc, although if I put more effort into researching lavc options (they're "tersely documented in the source code" according to the man page, so I'll have to check that out sometime), I'd probably use it instead.
  
  Did you know that many of the developers for MPlayer are also developers for xine and VLC?
  
  --
  'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
6. Re:Ahem... by makomk · 2006-09-21 03:10 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  For Windows CD ripping, I always used CDex (rips using cdparanoia, automatically grabs titles from FreeDB, and encodes using an included version of LAME).
7. Re:Ahem... by AnyoneEB · 2006-09-21 03:33 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Media Player Classic (or BSPlayer, which I use) is great if you need to play something with DirectShow (usually Windows Media stuff that VLC/MPlayer fail to play for no good reason), but in general VLC/MPlayer do a much better job of playing movies.
  
  --
  Centralization breaks the internet.
8. Re:Ahem... by IDontAgreeWithYou · 2006-09-21 04:16 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Actually, washing them probably wouldn't have helped unless you really scrubbed each leaf very carefully. Just rinsing off a handful of spinach under the sink wouldn't get rid of the eColi. Also, most bags of fresh spinach are sold as ready to eat so most people wouldn't wash them anyway.
  
  --
  Finding other idiots on /. that agree with your opinion doesn't make it any less stupid.
9. Re:Ahem... by ncc74656 · 2006-09-21 04:21 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  It's Called MdiaPlayerClassic but it's not M$ And when it's installed with the K-Lite codec pack it rocks !
  
  Codec packs can be dangerous. ffdshow handles nearly everything all by itself, is just one codec to install, and is free-as-in-speech.
  
  --
  20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
10. Re:Ahem... by plague3106 · 2006-09-21 04:28 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I apprecite everyone's suggestions, but like I said, there is no ONE program to rip, burn, play and manage playlists like WMP does.
  
  Also, I was too vague about the phone; it requires WMA format (v3m razr).. and it didn't look like those apps encoded to WMA either..
11. Re:Ahem... by Onan · 2006-09-21 06:54 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  So, aside from the standard /. bias that Apple==Good and Microsoft==Evil, ranting against WMP and people who use it is, as far as I'm concerned, a case of "the pot calling the kettle black."
  
  Well, I would say that in this case the pot does have a substantially different albedo than the kettle.
  
  So far, Apple's drm policies have gotten slowly looser and more permissive. They raised the number of machines that can be simultaneously authorized to play drm'd files from three to five; they raised the cap on the number of times that the same playlist of drm'd file can be burned from I think five to seven; they added a feature to automatically offer to copy drm'd files from an ipod to a machine as long as that machine is also authorized to play them.
  
  Whereas, as this and other stories document, Microsoft's drm policies have been getting more restrictive, even before compatibility issues like Zune and PlayForSure.
  
  And this is consistent with the beliefs of each company and its leader on the matter of copyright. Jobs has always maintained that copyright infringement is a social problem, not a technical problem. Which is why, before the music indistry had to buy in on the deal, the drm protection on the original ipod was small text on the packaging that read, "Don't steal music." No version of any Apple software has ever required registration or license confirmation. Apple seems to have always believed that if you make doing the right thing easy, people will generally do it, without you forcing them.
  
  By contrast, Bill Gates's first famed publication was a rant to the software developer community that they should stop stealing his BASIC, damnit.
  
  I don't dispute that drm is icky. But saying that these two offerings are exactly the same simply because they're both drm is oversimplifying things.
12. Re:Ahem... by TheSpoom · 2006-09-21 12:38 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  ffdshow has crashed my player (Winamp) a few times, enough that I disabled it for the format I was trying to play. (And it was ffdshow, not Winamp; files played fine once it was out of the picture.)
  
  Any software can be dangerous. Most codec packs are not, however, unless they include spyware with them. From personal experience, to my knowledge the Kazaa Lite codec pack in its various incarnations as downloaded from the edskes mirrors don't contain any.
  
  --
  It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
  - E. Debs
nice by gEvil+(beta) · 2006-09-21 01:54 · Score: 4, Informative

This is beautiful. Microsoft goes even further in restricting your rights for material you already own (god knows what purchases will be like). Meanwhile, Apple has been going in the other direction, finally adding a "transfer purchases from iPod" menu option in iTunes 7.

--
This guy's the limit!
1. Re:nice by GORby_ · 2006-09-21 02:41 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  I like the DRM on eMusic better: there is none.
  So far I've mostly succeeded in staying away from DRM infected music (having never bought it, but I have/had a few files I got for free), and I hope to keep it that way.
Workarounds by Peter+Trepan · 2006-09-21 02:25 · Score: 3, Informative

Workarounds can be found here and here.

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Re:More reasons to get Vista, hey! by trazom28 · 2006-09-21 02:55 · Score: 2, Informative

Because I don't wanna deal with the warez BS, and for right now, it does everything I need, and truly have greater priorities in life than computers (read: wife n kids). It's actually been in storage for.. almost a year now because we're re-wiring the house we bought :P

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50+% of windows users, that's who by TheAxeMaster · 2006-09-21 03:11 · Score: 2, Informative

And one of them was me. I've been building and admining systems for close to 10 years now, and I didn't even know it was there until a few nights ago. And it is on by default. Granted, I don't use WMP to rip stuff and I was looking for some other option at the time, but I found it on accident. At least half the people that use windows will not know it is there and on either.

I hope everyone here knows you can rip CDs at 8x with winamp for free, and get OGG/FLAC and other plugins to rip them to...
Some recommendations by RareButSeriousSideEf · 2006-09-21 04:06 · Score: 2, Informative

I use EAC (Exact Audio Copy) for all my audio ripping & burning needs. As far as free players with strong privacy, a small footprint, and really good library / playlist management, I'm still waiting. Meanwhile, I use MMJB (which I bought long, long ago) as my main music player & library manager.

For video conversions, I tend to use Nero tools. Having a Media Center PC with ~ 2TB of RAID storage, I really don't burn DVDs much anymore; I just store MP4s. VirtualDub is *almost* where I need it to be, but I don't have time to get a PhD in codec internals. I've had trouble finding a simple tool for XVid encoding, while Nero overcomes my lack of knowlege admirably.

The other non-free tools I use often are VideoReDo and ConvertXToDVD. VLC is a best-of-breed player with an improving set of transcoding features, and I use that for playback of the MP4 files I make with Nero Recode (MCE chokes on `em). Between all those, I have no unmet video needs. Well ok, Shrink and Decrypter might *occasionally* be required; despite having a completely legit CSS-compliant DVD codec on my system (nVidia), I still get occasional CSS errors when trying to play commercial DVDs in MCE. Decrypter's iso capability is the simplest way I've found to play the disc when that bug rears its ugly head. (As a matter of principle, I treat the iso as inseparable from the physical disc, and if it was a rental, I delete the iso when the disc goes back to Netflix).

In the "free transcoding tools" category, one probably should mention Gordian Knot (especially AutoGK), MediaCoder and MeGUI, all of which are on my system but rarely used anymore given the above.

--
Pi Ran Out
Re:Piracy by ConceptJunkie · 2006-09-21 04:37 · Score: 2, Informative

Yeah, raping the rights of the artists is what the RIAA companies do.

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