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:even for M$.

[westbake]

How much better would Vista have been without DRM?

Haven't you heard?

[DaedalusHKX]

Vista is like a gun. It burns ammo and requires a decent resupply stock.

The ammo in question is USB sticks. USB 2.0 preferred. I believe the technology is called Vista Ready Drive or Vista Ready Speed. I find it amusing since Microsoft spokesmen are rumored to have said those sticks were supposed to last TEN YEARS!!! Get this... frequently written to, USB sticks, also allowed to stay plugged in and get warm do NOT last 2 years, nevermind 10! I've burned out a couple here and there writing to them non stop and leaving them plugged in. Learned the hard way that you don't leave them to get hot and keep writing to them over and over. They also have a lifespan, and regardless the quality of the memory stick, it will die sooner or later. Using them as secondary RAM sticks is clever of Microsoft, finding a wonderful way to offset their bulky OS by putting the expense on the customer, once more. (If you laugh when I say I saw it coming, I will have to ask: "What, you mean you didn't?")

If you aren't willing to burn through a stick or ten, expect vista to remain relatively slow, at least until DDR4 or DDR5 :)

Re:Internet Archive.

[setagllib]

The poster is twitter, whose karma has been buried very deep. It doesn't matter what he posts now, the moderation system automatically assumes it's trash. Similarly, we get +1 automatically for not being utter prats.