MSN Music DRM Servers Going Dark In September

PDQ Back writes to tell us about an email Microsoft sent to former customers of MSN Music today. The company said it would be turning off the DRM servers used to authorize playback of music purchased from the now-defunct MSN Music store. "'As of August 31, 2008, we will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers,' reads the e-mail. This doesn't just apply to the five different computers that PlaysForSure allows users to authorize, it also applies to operating systems on the same machine (users need to reauthorize a machine after they upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista, for example). Once September rolls around, users are committed to whatever five machines they may have authorized — along with whatever OS they are running."

Comments

Re:DRM

[nine-times]

Yes, this is a perfect example against those who would say, "DRM isn't a problem unless you're a pirate." I'm sure there were people who paid good money to buy audio tracks. Not rent, *buy*.

I know, I know, make whatever legalistic argument you want, but when people paid there money, they had an expectation that they were *buying* the music. Therefore, deactivating these servers is effectively stealing those people's property, much more so than "pirates" do. When I "pirate" downloads a music track, they haven't deprived the rightful owner of the use of that music. However, when Microsoft disables their servers, the rightful owners are deprived of their ability to listen to that music.

Of course I'd like to see DRM disappear. Short of that, companies should at least be required to offer the means to crack their DRM should they ever deactivate their servers.

A side question: can Microsoft really not afford to just keep these servers running? I guess they're having some problems with Vista being a flop and all, but how expensive can it be to maintain these servers? On the other hand, I don't particularly blame Microsoft for this situation. It's an inherent problem with DRM, and it was bound to happen to someone sooner or later.

Re:Internet Archive.

[iggy_mon]

The worst thing to do to greedy RIAA asshats is to share really free music. There's more high quality music at that one site than you can listen to over the next 100 years.

i wonder why this comment is modded -1?

www.archive.org not only has DRM free live and studio music, but copyright expired movies, books, etc, etc etc. it's an amazing site and parent deserves to be modded up not down for making an interesting comment.