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

Internet Archive.

[twitter]

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.

Re:Within terms of agreement?

[Khyber]

It won't affect those of us in California with nice consumer protection laws and prior case law against End-User License Agreements as far as I'm aware of. We'll have our compensation somehow.

I don't get it...

[Joce640k]

Would it cost them a huge amount of money to keep the server running? I doubt it. Compared to stuff like Windows update it's a tiny drop in the ocean.

It's almost as if they *want* this to be a lesson to somebody...nah, couldn't be...

Re:DRM

[kimvette]

Which is why they say "Own it on CD today" or in the case of movies "own it on DVD today" ?

Is MS marketing really that stupid?

[Lieutenant_Dan]

Okay, first skip the obvious answer ... it was a rhetorical question.

They don't want to support it. Fair enough, stop issuing anymore of these types of DRM keys.

Now, what would cost them to keep this operational for a few years? 2 dedicated servers? 10? 20? 2 full-time staff for 5 to 10 more years to support this and use the existing datacentre support folks for the basic 24/7 stuff. Let's round it to a nice $2.5 million for 10 years. Not a whole lot for a large company.

What heat will they get from this? This is a PR fiasco for their DRM technology in general and more importantly shows that MS is willing to leave their "followers" high and dry when it suits them. What will these pissed off users do next time? Yeah, get iTunes, pirate, avoid music altogether, and better yet, avoid MS products. Potential revenue loss from 10,000 stranded users? Probably a few million. Think about: these folks PAID for DRM music. Easy sheep to get money from. They're killing their cash cow.

Someone at the MS marketing or client services department needs to get axed.

Re:suppositories

[schnikies79]

I can't find the link at the moment but I've read that MS has stated that they would release a patch that would permanently disable XP's activation requirements when final support ends.

If someone has the link, post away.

Re:Unlikely.

[dgatwood]

The reality is that copies of music are sold, not licensed. Title 17 does not provide for any licensing of a work to someone for use in the home. Search for the word "license" in Title 17 if you don't believe me. Every instance refers to licensing the right to copy it. The right to play a legally produced copy of music that was legally obtained is pretty soundly covered under "Fair Use". Therefore, a third party taking away the ability to play music that you own without providing a replacement effectively constitutes theft of property, and should be punished accordingly with jail time for the top people at the record companies and Microsoft plus civil liability. No contract can allow a company to violate the law, period. Such a clause would be considered an illegal agreement, and thus would not be upheld in court.

That said, if we naively believe the music industry's misinformation and consider it a license, Chapter 2, section 203 lays out what they have to do so revoke that license. Let's just say it would be cheaper for them to mail a copy of every song out on CD. Among other things, it requires them to provide an advance notice in writing to every single person who received the license, which must be signed by the copyright holders, must provide the effective date of termination, and can never occur under any circumstances prior to the 35th anniversary of the grant. Even such a revocation would not remove your rights to private listening of the material, however, as the copyright act explicitly disclaims any interest in covering such use of the material in Chapter 1, section 110:

Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, the following are not infringements of copyright:
...
(4) performance of a nondramatic literary or musical work otherwise than in a transmission to the public, without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage and without payment of any fee or other compensation for the performance to any of its performers, promoters, or organizers, if--
(A) there is no direct or indirect admission charge; or
(B) ...

That said, if this is a nonexclusive copyright license, however, and even if you believe that somehow the EULA manages to trump Title 17, unless there is a termination clause, they cannot revoke that license without cause, and even if there is, a court will almost certainly hold such a clause to be unconscionable, particularly in light of the implied promise that the music "plays for sure", the fundamental inequality of the two parties, and the fact that for most of the people involved, the only way to obtain the music on a per-track basis in a way that was compatible with their devices was through one of a handful of services all operating under license from Microsoft, all with the same contract terms.

In short, the case would be about as open and shut as a copyright-related lawsuit can get, and Microsoft and the recording industry would be on the losing end of it.... While normally I would say that the only people who win such a case are the lawyers, even a win for the lawyers in this case would be a great win for the public as a whole, as it would establish precedent for the legal responsibility incumbent upon music publishers who choose to use restrictive DRM. and any such precedent in that area would be a positive change over the current state of the industry.

Re:2014 isn't that far away

[hairyfeet]

I don't know about him, but a few years back I had to dig out my Pentium 100Mhz and sell it to my boss so we would have a machine with ISA slots for me to dig out my old DOS commands and install DOS 3 on because a customer had an old computer lathe (you know those ones that you input a pattern and it carves columns and posts) that would only run its ISA card on DOS 3 or below. The computer it was replacing was an old Intel 20Mhz that had to have been there forever from the amount of dust and wood shavings that had managed to work their way inside. Of course the company they bought it from have been out of business for years and running it in Win9X threw off the timing of the lathe.

So yeah, it really wouldn't surprise me if he has an embedded from deity knows when doing some specialized job that would be too expensive to replace. The mill owner said the pc and lathe cost them nearly $80K back in the day and a replacement would be so expensive they would never make their money back with the limited amount of custom columns they sell. So last I heard my original gamer rig which I used to run DOOM and Quake on is happily making scroll work on columns and posts while running DOS 3 as a custom lathe controller. Just goes to show you never know when that old junk in the closet might be useful again. ;-)