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

suppositories

[Anonymous Coward]

they melt in your ass, not in your hands.

Re:suppositories

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that we're talking about DRM, the parent poster is strangely on topic.

Re:suppositories

[fyngyrz]

Just wait until MS decides to turn off the server farm that enables XP installations; that'll put the music in perspective.

Can't say they should be surprised -- after all, they knowingly depend upon a product with fatal, vendor controlled DRM on it. That's playing with fire in any sensible person's book. The question is: Will MS's victims (excuse me, I should probably call them consenting masochistic partners) learn from this? Or will they continue to buy products booby trapped with fatal DRM?

I guess we already know the answer, anyway. It's that darned Gaussian come back to haunt us again.

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:suppositories

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why I have a corporate version of XP.

Re:suppositories

[urcreepyneighbor]

MS has stated that they would release a patch that would permanently disable XP's activation requirements when final support ends. Define "final".

Will Microsoft shut off product activation for XP after June? No, that would be crazy. While no one has said this will happen, it's conceivable that Windows could shut down product activation for XP at some point. But that would only happen after XP reaches its end-of-support term (when all support plans expire). The good news for you: That happens on April 8, 2014, which should be plenty of time to get the kinks worked out of Vista-or switch to a Mac, Linux, or anything else. Bottom line: Your copy of XP will work, totally legally, for at least six more years.

Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/25252

There's no point in waiting until 2014. ;\

Re:suppositories

[nine-times]

Just wait until MS decides to turn off the server farm that enables XP installations; that'll put the music in perspective.

At least Windows XP has the corporate version that allows you to install it without activation. Worse yet is Vista, where even the corporate version requires activation. Also, at the current rate of Vista adoption, they might stop supporting Vista before they stop supporting XP.

Re:suppositories

[basscomm]

Microsoft will not use activation as a tool to force people to upgrade. Activation is merely an anti-piracy tool, nothing else.

Microsoft will also support the activation of Windows XP throughout its life and will likely provide an update that turns activation off at the end of the product's lifecycle so users would no longer be required to activate the product.

That information used to be available here, but has mysteriously vanished from the revamped page. It's still on this international page, however.

Re:suppositories

[TristanGrimaux]

totally agree!

Re:suppositories

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe this is Microsoft testing the waters for how well it would go over if it decided to turn the XP activation servers off?

Re:suppositories

[Anonymous Coward]

For those that don't want to scan and search through all those FAQ's for the relevent question, here it is:

• Will Microsoft use activation to force me to upgrade? In other words, will Microsoft ever stop giving out activation codes for any of the products that require activation?

  No, Microsoft will not use activation as a tool to force people to upgrade. Activation is merely an anti-piracy tool, nothing else.

  Microsoft will also support the activation of Windows XP throughout its life and will likely provide an update that turns activation off at the end of the product's lifecycle so users would no longer be required to activate the product.

Re:suppositories

[starwed]

Can't say they should be surprised -- after all, they knowingly depend upon a product with fatal, vendor controlled DRM on it.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who didn't really understand the arrangement when they bought this music. They probably "foolishly" assumed it would work like buying music the old fashioned way...

Re:suppositories

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont have to worry about the XP activation servers, I already have my Volume license key and Volume CD from Bittorrent. No activation required

Re:suppositories

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Microsoft will also support the activation of Windows XP throughout its life and will likely provide an update that turns activation off at the end of the product's lifecycle

... unless some 12 year old kid in Latvia saves them the trouble.

Re:suppositories

[leuk_he]

Corporate key do get expired, if you run updates. THis is from expierence. THe compagny gets a program to roll out taht updates they key. I gues the company key got leaked or something like that.

If you run some pc/laptop that is not connected to the compagny lan , and update it after a year or so, it ets a invalid key.

Only official way to solve this is to reinstall XP (well, rolling out fresh images is far less work for support than fixing things)

Re:suppositories

[geekoid]

If my computer is still doing what I need it to do in 2014, then I don't want the OS being turned off.

The idea, even in principle, is very anti-consumer and wrong.

Re:suppositories

[mrraven]

I plan on still using my Core2duo notebook running XP in 5 years. I hope Wine will allow me to run my Adobe CS3 apps smoothly by then.

Re:suppositories

[fyngyrz]

...I already have my Volume license key and Volume CD from Bittorrent.

Right, right.

Now all you have to worry about is the feds turning off activation for your "free to walk around" program.

DRM

[mosiadh]

Proof that DRM is inherently evil, even for the MS fanbois.

Re:DRM

[catwh0re]

In the past, the argument against perpetual authorisation was along the lines of "if the music retailer goes under" then all your music will be lost. This, however, is proof that only a change in business strategy can render all your purchased music defunct. There could also be legal/authorisation issues if music labels pull out of the store. (Or in MS's case swap from strategy to another.)

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:DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

When you say 'rightful owner' I think a better choice of words would be 'rightful licensee'? We don't own artist's music.

Re:DRM

[LWATCDR]

Backwards I am afraid.
DRM isn't a problem if your a pirate. It is only a problem if you are customer.

Re:DRM

[kimvette]

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

Re:DRM

[dgatwood]

Here's a thought: class action lawsuit naming both Microsoft and the record labels as codefendants. Demand that they make available DRM-free copies of all music that has been legally purchased or at a minimum provide free copies based on a more up-to-date DRM mechanism. It's time to force the industry to pay the true cost of DRM: maintaining support for it forever.

Once that is over, we should push for a law that requires all DRM-laden music sellers to be bonded for enough money to cover the cost of maintaining the DRM scheme indefinitely (that is, operating off of only a portion of the interest earned on the principal).

Re:DRM

[ceoyoyo]

Ahrr, there ain't no DRM on my music, matey!

Re:DRM

[t0y]

We rightfully own licenses.

Re:DRM

[krazykit]

Except that they never DID buy the tracks. They simply licensed them for play. It just sounded like they were buying them from the marketing.

Re:DRM

[DaedalusHKX]

You do realize that Microsoft might actually be trying to demonstrate that DRM is indeed a tool of evil.

And not just any kind of evil... but EEEEEVVEEEEELLL.. kind of evil.

Well, all I can say is simple. Expect that sooner or later, people are going to get a MAJOR shaft in the arse for locking themselves into servitude to any particular big shop. It is to be expected.

Re:DRM

[funkdancer]

... and they wonder why people turn to piracy...? The mind boggles.

Re:DRM

[UnknowingFool]

Also don't MS partners suffer too? If Windows cannot authenticate the music, will it not play on their music players too. Why should they care? Cause they will have lots of angry customer who will blame them for something which is out of their control.

Re:DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

only a change in business strategy can render all your purchased music defunct

I disagree, the retailer going under could render it defunct just as well.

Re:DRM

[nine-times]

Most of these online stores, even the stores with DRM, tell you you're "buying" the album or track. You know, like before you actually pay money, you click on some sort of button that often says something like "buy this album". It doesn't say "rent" or "license".

Now there may well be something buried in the license agreement when you sign up for the store that says, "you aren't actually buying anything, you're just licensing the right listen them, and we can revoke that right whenever we want." Still, the way the stores are representing the transaction as "buying" the album, and that's the way consumers understand the transaction.

If there isn't any legal consequence for the owners of online "stores" for this sort of misrepresentation, there should be.

Re:DRM

[faedle]

Why would they do that?

Seems like one of the largest pushers of DRM is, in actuality, Microsoft.

Re:DRM

[packeteer]

And just as we are bound to the license so are they. Technically they own the music and we own a license to it. That should't mean either party can do whatever they want.

Re:DRM

[calebt3]

Maybe "simply a change in business strategy" would have been a better choice of words.

Re:DRM

[jank1887]

so, can anyone post a copy of the EULA from back when the agreement was first made? Not that EULA's are worth the electrons they're written with, but I'd be curious to see what both parties agreed to, and if anything remotely like the current situation was hinted at...

Re:DRM

[Z34107]

DRM is perhaps a necessary evil, as long as the major labels feel the need to compel anyone who sells their music to use it.

But, it's not as big of a deal as people make it out to be - the DRM can be circumvented by burning to and ripping from a CD.

"But, this reduces audio quality!" you say? I figure if you were that concerned about audio quality, you wouldn't be buying compressed music from MSN, iTunes, etc.

If you use online stores, regularly burn your songs onto CD and re-rip them - it's the only way to "back up" your music. I almost got burned when "URGE", that store that used to be the default in Windows Media Player closed down. They weren't as heartless as Microsoft - they transferred your licenses to Rhapsody, so in theory you could use the Rhapsody player to listen to your DRM'd music. Except that Rhapsody wouldn't install on any computer I tried. (But, it didn't matter anyway, hahahaha!)

I'm rambling, but moral of the story is: "Don't buy music." They're trying their best to make it anything but worthwhile.

Re:DRM

[frusengladje]

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.

Maybe it doesn't matter if they shut it down, because no one is using it?

Re:DRM

[amirulbahr]

When I "pirate"... A Freudian slip perhaps?

Re:DRM

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Says who? The people selling them?

Re:DRM

[Xtravar]

Same reason Steve Jobs has ranted against DRM, yet Apple enjoys their lock-in due to DRM.

Unfortunately, I forgot the logic behind this, but I'm sure someone will chime in.

Re:DRM

[Xtravar]

I disagree, the retailer going under could render it defunct just as well. "Going under" is a change in business strategy!

Re:DRM

[EdIII]

How on earth did the parent get modded Troll?

I, along with many others, have been saying this same statement for years. Nobody actually "owns" their music. They own certain contractual rights to music owned by other people, also referred to as an intellectual property license.

The comment itself, is neither supporting the music industry or the consumers. It is a simple statement of fact. Four words no less, which are actually insightful, if anything at all. I personally, have always said there is a problem with the consumer's understanding of exactly what it is they are purchasing.

Till MP3 really started to take off, as well as the Internet, a physical CD was the predominant medium that you kept music on. It was not till after 2000, at least, that making 1:1 copies of any CD was viable economically. This was a concern for various industries, since there was no degradation in quality, as was inherent to the process of duplicating analogue mediums.

Now that the Internet has become so ubiquitous, it is a truly trivial matter to transfer around very large amounts of digital media, a large part of it in MP3 format. Physical mediums are disappearing incredibly fast. MP3 players have replaced them as the predominant storage medium, and it is interesting to note that the media player and storage medium have combined into a single device.

So although the playing field has changed dramatically, the consumer has remained ignorant. The average consumer has always construed that their physical ownership of a piece of plastic effectively gave them actual ownership of a piece of music. This was never true from day one. It is not the consumer's fault either. The music industry was never very interested in explaining the purchased license rights to the consumer. From the consumer's point of view, they gave somebody money in return for being able to listen to a piece of music FOREVER. Whether or not you agree with that statement is 100% irrelevant. I have met maybe 1 or 2 people out of ONE HUNDRED that actually had a more sophisticated understanding of intellectual property rights and license agreements. Want to guess how many were lawyers? So to discuss this, you have to be considering the understanding of the average person, the lowest common denominator. In this case, the lowest common denominator still thinks they "own" music. Not just their lifetime either. My own father believed that a CD, if properly taken care of, could be passed down from generation to generation. He must own 5,000 of them. Being an intelligent man, he reasoned that in a decade or two it would be very easy to maintain and backup his entire library of music and transfer it to a different medium. He did not expect that legal counsel for Sony would openly call him a criminal and a thief for daring to maintain his investment.

Which brings us to a more nefarious motivation, which was that the consumer would have to purchase copies over and over when the physical medium itself failed. Once again, this situation was created out of the consumer's ignorance. Where was the copy of the license agreement? Where was the fine print? Where was anything that ever described the rights of a consumer with their music in layman's terms?

The music industry as a whole is getting their "just desserts". Maybe they could not have seen the future, but they are more responsible than the consumer for perpetuating this nebulous cloud that is the ownership and the licensing rights of music.

When it comes to DRM'd Music, there may well be wholly different contracts that were signed between the content providers and the consumer. I would expect that to be so, even though I do not know directly. I was never naive enough to sign one of those contracts and buy that crap. I don't say that to insult anyone who did either. I doubt that they read those agreements either, and reasonably expected to be able to listen to their music forever too.

So I hate to say I told you so to a bunch of people, but that wa

Re:DRM

[Fweeky]

But, it's not as big of a deal as people make it out to be - the DRM can be circumvented by burning to and ripping from a CD.

"But, this reduces audio quality!" you say? I figure if you were that concerned about audio quality, you wouldn't be buying compressed music from MSN, iTunes, etc. You figure wrong. Modest bitrate lossy files are made to be transparent to most people, but recompressing it is probably going to introduce noticable artifacts for many people who would otherwise be perfectly happy.

Also, what the fuck? You find it reasonable to dig out a CD(-R, erase), burn, rip, encode, and tag every album or track you buy? Especially when you're already paying most of the price of a physical copy? Excuse me if I find that a completely idiotic suggestion; I buy music online because it's convenient and fast, this oft brought up suggestion makes it neither.

Re:DRM

[Lije Baley]

Word.

Re:DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes getting burnt is good for those who buy stupid things. I hope they will think more carefully next time.

Re:DRM

[kalislashdot]

Every time someone says "there should be a law" a Libertarian cries.

Re:DRM

[Vectronic]

Surely... but perhaps he was using 'I' as a numeral... "When one 'pirate' downloads..."

Or possibly, "When 'iPirate' Downloads..." maybe its some sort of pirating software...lol

I Pirate, You Pirate, We All Pirate For iPirate.

Re:DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

A lawsuit against the RIAA for stealing our music. I love it!

Re:DRM

[DaedalusHKX]

Damn I was gonna mention those twin paragons of virtue the RIAA and MPAA, but hell, you get the cake bringing up Apple's saintly record :)

Re:DRM

[Kram_Gunderson]

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.

Oh they do. In the email sent out by Microsoft, it recommends burning your files to audio cd and (presumably) re-ripping them. Seriously.

Re:DRM

[Garridan]

With Apple, the logic is, and always has been, "Don't look at us, look at MICROSOFT! Like, OMG, they're so evil! And our stuff is so pretty and friendly and nice and easy to use, so don't look at us. Did I mention, Microsoft is EVIL?"

And now, I fear that Google is doing the same.

Re:DRM

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I, along with many others, have been saying this same statement for years. Nobody actually "owns" their music. They own certain contractual rights to music owned by other people, also referred to as an intellectual property license.

Except, of course, that that isn't true either.

Nobody owns music, because music is not property. You can own a copy of some music, stored in some physical form. The law reserves the right to make certain uses of that copy to certain people, for example, via the copyright in the piece and in any particular performance of it. But the record industry or copyright holder no more own music I've paid for than I do, because music in intangible and not subject to ownership.

Now, if the record industry have taken someone's money in return for giving them a copy of some music, and then subsequently undermine the consumer's ability to enjoy that music in an expected way, then that is changing the rules. If the original contract, implied or otherwise, granted the rights to enjoy the music in normal fashion, then taking away this facility is breaking the contract and I don't see why whoever took the money shouldn't be liable for part of the cost representing the value lost. If the original contract contained some lawyerly weasel words about this possibility, then I think there is a decent ethical (and possibly legal too) argument that such terms would not normally be expected by someone buying their copy of the music and the one-sided contract terms should be invalidated.

This is simple contract law and ethics, and DRM and the technical means involved don't really matter other than as the means to the end. As with all technology, DRM in itself is ethically neutral; it's how it's used that is ethical or evil. In this case, for example, there would be no problem now if upon selling the DRM'd copies of the music to customers, the provider had also been compelled to lodge a DRM-free version in escrow, to be released in circumstances such as this so that customers did not lose out. It's the way that no such arrangement appears to be in place here and the law seems to do nothing to protect the consumer at this point that makes the situation unjust, not the DRM.

Re:DRM

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If there isn't any legal consequence for the owners of online "stores" for this sort of misrepresentation, there should be. Most ISPs have not had to own up to claiming "unlimited internet access" either.

Re:DRM

[bill_mcgonigle]

Why should they care?

Because everybody who 'partners' with Microsoft eventually gets screwed?

Re:DRM

[Paul Slocum]

How about this: somebody releases commercial software that strips the Microsoft music DRM. Author of the software gets charged with DMCA violation. Author wins in court due to this special situation that clearly illustrates the consumer rights problems with the "circumvention" portion of the DMCA, setting a new legal precedent.

Re:DRM

[electrosoccertux]

In light of MS's recent comments about turning Windows 7 into a modular OS, and making it subscription based, lets look at any incentives MS might have in cutting off people from their legally purchased music.

I wonder if they're doing this on purpose to scare people away from paying once; to later introduce a subscription music service. Instead of buy once, play forever; buy forever, and play as long as you pay.

It would be very sly of them to scare people away from "buying once" into "paying continually, and if they decide to pull the product, well who cares, you're not paying anymore then after all". I'd have to say this shows incredible foresight if this is what they're aiming for; doing this to leave a sour taste in people's mouth with Buy Once software schemes; aiming for a more tame response to a subscription only Windows7. People would think "well what if they pull the activation servers on Windows Vista like they did the music? Maybe I DO want a subscription service..."

I once thought MS was stupid. Now, they may be more ingenious* than I ever imagined.

*It's probably just some Exec deciding they're not making enough money.

Re:DRM

[Phorion]

You know, like before you actually pay money, you click on some sort of button that often says something like "buy this album". It doesn't say "rent" or "license". Ever wonder why most of the buttons are called "Add to Cart," "Download," and "Checkout"?

Re:DRM

[zygwin]

If the music that I hold the license to expires its copyright age (say 60 years),will I then be able to pass it on to my younger generation ?

Re:DRM

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

You own the copy, the copyright holder owns the music/movie. The GGP indeed needs to choose his words more carefully, because there are usually two rightful owners involved in copyright cases.

Re:DRM

[Almahtar]

Film at 11.

Re:DRM

[EdIII]

Ummm... No. However, at that point it won't matter will it? Plus, with the way things are going, I fully expect copyrights and patents to swing even farther towards the content holders. Note, I said HOLDERS, not CREATORS.

The more the business models don't work for the content related industries the more they resort to changing copyright, patent laws to favor themselves. When that does not work completely, they have resorted to brute force (MafIAA).

In any case, being able to strongly defend your "rights" is important. To be able to pass that on to someone else is equally important as well.

Re:DRM

[Pofy]

>You own the copy, the copyright holder owns the music/movie.

Not really, the copyright holder has the copyright to the music. You can't own the intangible "music". POssibly you can say they own the copyright to the music if you like to have an "own" in there. Holdung the copyright to something is NOT the same as owning it, not even close. It envolves quite different rights and restrictions.

So, "You own a copy of the music, the copyright holder owns a copyright to the music".

Re:DRM

[Znork]

Nobody actually "owns" their music. They own certain contractual rights to music owned by other people, also referred to as an intellectual property license.

This is false. You own the media and the contents on that media. Copyright is merely a legal burden on the right to copy those contents; it doesn't change your actual ownership.

The most obvious way to demonstrate this is to consider the border condition when copyright on a CD you own expires. There is no change in ownership, there is no eminent domain done on someone elses property, there is no termination of a contract. Yet suddenly you can do exactly anything and everything you want with your property, including selling copies, charging for plays of it, etc.

Re:DRM

[atrocious cowpat]

"We rightfully own licenses.

Actually we pwn licenses righteously.
I knpw I do.

Re:DRM

[LaskoVortex]

With Apple, the logic is, and always has been, "Don't look at us, look at MICROSOFT!

You should be fair. I updated to OS X 10.5 without entering a key. Apple may have its flaws, but OS activation is not one (yet). That's probably why I haven't switched (yet).

Re:DRM

[dw604]

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*. Their whole problem is the fear that the music lasts "forever" in cyberspace. It doesn't. Just like CDs and tapes things are damaged and destroyed, especially by newbies who don't know when their sole hard drive is going to call it quits. There's the returning customers they were so worried about. They could even sell them insurance and then screw them over!

Re:DRM

[Brett Johnson]

"Going under" is a change in business strategy!

I have worked under a couple of CEOs where "Going under" was undoubtedly the business strategy.

Re:DRM

[Bert64]

Well, Apple had the choice between DRM and being allowed to distribute music...
Or no DRM, no itunes store, no music distribution by Apple.

They may not like DRM, but they were forced to use it in order to start distributing music. They could have made the DRM a lot stronger, but as it stands you can circumvent by burning to CD and ripping again. Not sure if any other DRM schemes, like microsoft's, let you do that.

Re:DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you don't own the music itself. Neither does the artist. The artist (or, more likely, the record company) does own the copyright, however, and you own your copy of it, just as you own a book you bought, or a car. (Had to put a car analogy in there, just on general principle.)

Re:DRM

[LaskoVortex]

We don't own artist's music.

Right. We can't resell copies of it. In other words, we don't own the copyright.

But you would probably further argue that ownership means the right to listen to it, correct? Or would you lump this in with copy? That is, to listen to it, it needs to be transformed into a copy as sound waves before it hits our ears and becomes a copy of the music in our memory? But does it stop there? Are we in possession of stolen music if we listen to it in our heads at will (as in "that song won't get out of my head--you know the one, from the Charlie Brown movie where they went to camp").

But, where does it end, Charlie Brown? Is this what artists intend? I would argue, having written some songs myself, and having my own art grace the cover of magazines, that this is not what artists intend. I would suspect that other artists are like me in that they feel like their work exists for the world and that its value is not in the money required to purchase a copy of it, but in the pleasure or thought it provokes.

Re:DRM

[__aaxwdb6741]

If I remember correctly, the logic was that Apple is a "Good" company, and that the DRM is only there because record labels require it. For now, they're accepting this, so they can become so big that that no record label could ever survive without iTunes sales. Once the power shifts, they *could* demand from the record labels that music is sold without DRM.

You know, the current DRM-free offerings on iTunes cost just a little more, not only because the record label wants it, but also because a few cents more is enough to thwart any regular user, who will then generate the same amount of pennies to Apple for only being able to use their products.

Every company loves DRM. It's only the users who don't want it - and why should anybody care about them?

Re:DRM

[Bert64]

Maintaining windows servers is really quite expensive, even if you don't have to pay for the base OS...
You usually need to do regular maintenance, apply patches, keep antivirus up to date etc... And you have to keep patching all those garbage client apps that really have no business being on a server.

Re:DRM

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

It depends on your definition of ownership. Suffice to say that a copyright holder owns a piece of art insofar as much as it can be owned.

So, "You own a copy of the music, the copyright holder owns a copyright to the music".

I'm sorry, but that's wrong. You don't own the music, you own the copy. You only own the music when it goes into the public domain.

Re:DRM

[EdIII]

This is false. You own the media and the contents on that media. Copyright is merely a legal burden on the right to copy those contents; it doesn't change your actual ownership.

Now that is false. Who cares about the "media"? It is just a transport mechanism. It does not matter if you buy a book written on paper, or on stone. What matters is the content.

I have heard your argument many times, "copyright is the only legal mechanism protecting the content... there are no contracts, there are no rights". Well that is just demonstrably false. Ownership is not ambiguous. As a term, a word, it is explicit.

Ownership

1. The state or fact of being an owner.
2. Legal right to the possession of a thing.
3. the act of having and controlling property.

Now if I did truly own the contents on a physical piece of media, such as a music CD, i could do whatever I wanted to with it. This is clearly not true. The only entities that can do that are the content providers, such as music labels and the artists directly. So my "ownership" is not tangible. I seem to have certain rights to it, but it is not my property. You seem to want to argue that I have actual ownership and control over property and that copyright law merely limits the actions I can perform with said property. That is not true, and reality does not hold it to be true either.

Why do we say, "Bob sold the movie and book rights to his story to some studio in Hollywood"? Bob OWNED the content first. He was granted ownership by a copyright. A copyright is, "The legal right granted to an author, composer, playwright, publisher, or distributor to exclusive publication, production, sale, or distribution of a literary, musical, dramatic, or artistic work." What entity is doing the "granting"? Our government. A copyright is something that is granted to us by our government. It is something tangible, and something we can sell, or license. A copyright is also regarded as personal property. So a copyright is similar to the ownership of land. It is the government that is recognizing that we own the land, just as it recognizes that we own literary, music, dramatic, or artistic works.

So at no time, am I actually granted ownership of any part of an artists copyrighted work through my act of compensation in a typical music CD "sale". The artist produced a copy on a physical medium and then distributed to me. The artist did NOT SELL me any part of his copyright, but performed an act of distribution which is one of the rights that the artist is granted by the government. This act of distribution was compensated, and did effectively license the work to me. The term "license" is used in copyright law itself. Copyright law also protects that artist and then limits what I can and cannot do with the LICENSE. A piece of music is not like a piece of physical land. Only in VERY few places on the planet is new land being created. However, it is far easier for me to reproduce and then receive compensation for an artists copyrighted work. Copyrights exist to protect the content creators.

If anything, the effect of a copyright is to create a licensing agreement between the artist and the consumer, and is an agreement created by the government. This does not preclude an artist from creating new licensing contracts directly, but instead allows the artist to sell it and have certain licensing rights already in existence. Specifically, the exclusive right to reproduce of copy the work. Since copyright is clearly regarded as personal property, is it is perfectly reasonable to state that you can create contractual agreements regarding it, and that language is present in copyright law.

So when I say that there are contractual rights to music, and that people effectively "own" those rights only, I am referring to any licensing contracts that exist between the content creators

Re:DRM

[Dan541]

Yea, I download all my music 2.

Re:DRM

[Dan541]

That's exactly what fraud is.

~Dan

Re:DRM

[Z34107]

Perhaps I lack a discerning ear, but neither I nor my friends can tell the difference between burnt-and-ripped songs and the originals when both are in a random shuffle. (The exception is if volume leveling gets turned on; besides the CD copies being louder, it also seems to magnify artifacts.) Not exactly a double-blind test, but in my experience the artifacts introduced are negligible.

Now, I don't buy much music - the DRM'd part of my collection fills 3 CD-Rs. Tagging is a hassle, but it's at most 5 minutes of work to tag Artist/Albulm/Title a CD-Rs worth of music. Still less time than traveling to a store, and less cost than buying the full albums ($10 per song on average versus $0.99) Besides, having a legal DRM-free copy is more than worth it.

But, let's assume you're right. Artifacts are noticible and painful. It's too expensive. It takes too much time. Puppies are dying. Etc. If the MSN music owners do not/did not do this, they're out their entire collection. A re-encoded collection is better than no collection.

I'm glad you've had good experiences with buying music online. If it's DRM'd, I still recommend backing up an unencumbered copy - otherwise you're SOL if the license servers go down, as at least two have.

Re:DRM

[electrictroy]

I don't really care what Microsoft's motive is,
I only care that I have $1000 worth of songs that are now worthless.
That's fraud.

If I was a lawyer, I'd file a class-action lawsuit for the benefit of the MSN Store's customers, demanding either a full refund, or the ability to download a perpetual license with no expiration date.

Re:DRM

[electrictroy]

Actually Apple's Itunes already demanded DRM-free songs.

- One company acquiesced and now sells songs without restrictions.
- Another company said "screw you" and left Itunes.

So it will be interesting to see how all this turns out. In the end, I think it will be customer pressure that forces companies to either allow freedom, or else go bankrupt.

Re:DRM

[electrictroy]

You forgot Option 3:

- Don't pay at all. It's just music after all, and there's plenty of it available for free (either via radio or in the public domain). Just because the record companies are trying to shove shit into my ears doesn't mean I have to comply. I'll just keep my dollars in my pocket and listen to the free stuff.

Drive the companies into bankruptcy.

Re:DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the very reason I purchase all of my music on CD. As technology and business models evolve my music CDs remain unchanged. I can always return to the original copy when future encoding schemes change. And, if an online music store goes out of business, they can't take my CDs with them!

Re:DRM

[electrictroy]

P.S.

Since I'm not a lawyer, as soon as I get home, I'll copy the songs to my audio cassette deck.* I may try burning some CDs, but I don't think Microsoft's DRM allows us to do that. Videocassettes* are another alternative for storage that I might try.

* (Compact Cassette - a 1970s-era technology that uses Analog tape storage to defeat digital copyright; compact cassette features CD quality sound with 20-22,000 hertz and 70 db dynamic range. Videocassettes have similar properties.)

Re:DRM

[irtza]

How is Darl?

Re:DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Just burn all of you DRMed music to audio CDs (or virtual audio CDs) before the servers go down. Then you can rip it back off.

Re:DRM

[__aaxwdb6741]

*is* there customer pressure? Are DRM-free songs more popular than DRM'ed songs on iTunes?

We have a great test case here. Is DRM really so inconvenient for the user that he is willing to spend a few extra pennies to get rid of it?

I don't think that is the case. Please don't be confused, I am not a fan of DRM. It's just that I don't trust the average Joe to be savvy enough to care.

Re:DRM

[rtb61]

Well consider this, you have a copyright licence to that content that is protected by copyright law for, basically, 70 years. M$ is attempt to steal back those licences without offering a refund by denying you the ability to legitimately retain them, with operating system upgrades, especially as M$ forces those upgrades by stopping all support for previous OS prior to their 70 copyright expiry. So yeah, it is really a target for a class action lawsuit and via that civil action forcing M$ to provide a full refund.

Re:DRM

[Lavene]

I'm sorry, but that's wrong. You don't own the music, you own the copy. You only own the music when it goes into the public domain. I would say you own your copy of the work. This is because the copyrightholder can not in any way legally stop you from listening to your legally acquired CDs. If you have bought the CD there is nothing the copyrightholder can do what so ever if he changes his mind and decide to pull his work. It simply can not be done.

With DRM infected files this is not so. If the 'seller' decides that you should no longer be able to play the files they can do so. Or demand that you pay them some more... again and again.

I don't question that business model though. I do however question those numbnuts that actually thinks this is OK. People that's actually fine with having to ask some distributor to play the files they have bought. People that's fine with a limited number of 'devices' they can play their music on etc etc. Well, I just don't get it I guess...

Re:DRM

[fastest fascist]

Why WOULD they keep the servers up? If the store is gone, the servers are not generating revenue anymore. Sure, MS will get some negative publicity for it, but sooner or later, the costs of upkeep will outweigh the benefits.

Re:DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

So although the playing field has changed dramatically, the consumer has remained ignorant. The average consumer has always construed that their physical ownership of a piece of plastic effectively gave them actual ownership of a piece of music

I'm tired of hearing this crap every time a copyright-related discussion comes up (yes, you too because you seem to be suggesting that the record companies own the music). Do you know why copyright legislation was drafted in the first place? Because it was acknowledged that any and all public displays of arts are publicly owned.

There. Released music, books, movies can not be owned, simply because the information contained therein cannot be contained (pun intended). Paintings are a different matter, because what is of value there is the original work, not the scene depicted (much like the original manuscript from a book). The sooner that the discussion moves away from claims of ownership, the sooner we might actually reach some understanding (and maybe concensus?) between all parties.

Copyright is a license to distribute (or more accurately, a prohibition to distribute without license). It only deals with the rights and limitations of transfering information between two individuals (legal sense).

The point of contention between consumers and producers has nothing to do with ownership, while both sides are claiming they own it. The argument centers around these facts:
- producers claim that any and all copies are a violation of the license, in complete disregard for fair use rights
- consumers typically consider any and all non-profit copies to be non-violations. Most people would agree however, that making money off of unlicensed distribution constitutes a crime.

Like I already said, both sides are polluting the discussion with disingeneous (or ignorant) claims of ownership, or even legal claims such as theft. In the Netherlands we actually have a more accurate term for what the MAFIAA call theft: broodroof. But sadly I don't know whether there is an English counterpart. It means as much as "preventing someone to make a living".

Back to the topic at hand, we actually had the same issue about two years back. Planet MusicStream (a multi-ISP initiative) had to close its doors because it never became financially viable. They ended up paying â10 to each and every customer in order to be allowed to shut down their service.

One final point of interest: with DRM it can be argued that the work has never been publicly released, since the act of distribution occurs behind the protection of a mutually shared key. But in that case (only distribution through DRM), copyright doesn't even begin to apply.

Re:DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

How on earth did the parent get modded Troll?

I, along with many others, have been saying this same statement for years. Nobody actually "owns" their music. They own certain contractual rights to music owned by other people, also referred to as an intellectual property license.

The comment itself, is neither supporting the music industry or the consumers. It is a simple statement of fact. Four words no less, which are actually insightful, if anything at all. I personally, have always said there is a problem with the consumer's understanding of exactly what it is they are purchasing.

Till MP3 really started to take off, as well as the Internet, a physical CD was the predominant medium that you kept music on. It was not till after 2000, at least, that making 1:1 copies of any CD was viable economically. This was a concern for various industries, since there was no degradation in quality, as was inherent to the process of duplicating analogue mediums.

Now that the Internet has become so ubiquitous, it is a truly trivial matter to transfer around very large amounts of digital media, a large part of it in MP3 format. Physical mediums are disappearing incredibly fast. MP3 players have replaced them as the predominant storage medium, and it is interesting to note that the media player and storage medium have combined into a single device.

So although the playing field has changed dramatically, the consumer has remained ignorant. The average consumer has always construed that their physical ownership of a piece of plastic effectively gave them actual ownership of a piece of music. This was never true from day one. It is not the consumer's fault either. The music industry was never very interested in explaining the purchased license rights to the consumer. From the consumer's point of view, they gave somebody money in return for being able to listen to a piece of music FOREVER. Whether or not you agree with that statement is 100% irrelevant. I have met maybe 1 or 2 people out of ONE HUNDRED that actually had a more sophisticated understanding of intellectual property rights and license agreements. Want to guess how many were lawyers? So to discuss this, you have to be considering the understanding of the average person, the lowest common denominator. In this case, the lowest common denominator still thinks they "own" music. Not just their lifetime either. My own father believed that a CD, if properly taken care of, could be passed down from generation to generation. He must own 5,000 of them. Being an intelligent man, he reasoned that in a decade or two it would be very easy to maintain and backup his entire library of music and transfer it to a different medium. He did not expect that legal counsel for Sony would openly call him a criminal and a thief for daring to maintain his investment.

Which brings us to a more nefarious motivation, which was that the consumer would have to purchase copies over and over when the physical medium itself failed. Once again, this situation was created out of the consumer's ignorance. Where was the copy of the license agreement? Where was the fine print? Where was anything that ever described the rights of a consumer with their music in layman's terms?

The music industry as a whole is getting their "just desserts". Maybe they could not have seen the future, but they are more responsible than the consumer for perpetuating this nebulous cloud that is the ownership and the licensing rights of music.

When it comes to DRM'd Music, there may well be wholly different contracts that were signed between the content providers and the consumer. I would expect that to be so, even though I do not know directly. I was never naive enough to sign one of those contracts and buy that crap. I don't say that to insult anyone who did either. I doubt that they read those agreements either, and reasonably expected to be able to listen to their music forever too.

So I hate to say I told you so to a bunch

Re:DRM

[FireFury03]

the DRM can be circumvented by burning to and ripping from a CD.

Which in some jurisdictions is illegal...

Re:DRM

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Yes, generally you own the copy as I said. DRM poses an interesting possible exception though. It comes with your copy, is not legally allowed to be removed, thus any restriction placed on it must be adhered to. The question is not "what rights do I have, considering I own it?", but "do I own it, considering the rights I have?"

Actually, the best question is "WTF is with the DMCA?"

Re:DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

I've noticed this while using Windows Media player, and it's irritating. I own the CD, I use WMP to rip the CD and I play the track back from the same computer - yet WMP keeps prompting me to "buy this CD!" I ALREADY OWN IT. It's as if the assumption that every mp3 was stolen is programmed right into the program.

Re:DRM

[Wooky_linuxer]

Exactly. The average Joe is not intelligent enough to realize that DRM might f*ck him someday. So we need more experiences like this, Sony's rootkit and so on, so that even the average Joe out there will be forced to see how evil DRM and draconian copyright measures are.

Re:DRM

[mc900ftjesus]

MS fanbois? MS DRM is a small piece of their horrible ensemble.

Apple is DRM. What happens when Apple decides that an OSX update runs "too slow" on an old Mac Mini and Jobs decides that you need new hardware to run OSX 10.6.3.2.3? He locks you out from the newest update and you're forced to buy another overpriced machine from him.

Just wait, you left him in control of your hardware, software, music and movies. He pretty much owns your whole setup.

Re:DRM

[greedyturtle]

Every time someone mentions "DRM" and "You don't actually *own* your private property," a Libertarian gets royally cheesed off.

Re:DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

* (Compact Cassette - a 1970s-era technology that uses Analog tape storage to defeat digital copyright; compact cassette features CD quality sound with 20-22,000 hertz and 70 db dynamic range. Videocassettes have similar properties.)

What!? Unless you're talking about Digital Compact Cassettes, which never caught on, you couldn't be more wrong. The average hi-quality compact cassette was more like 40-14,0000 Hz +/- 6dB and had a lot of tape hiss (Dolby B was developed just to adddress this) for which it takes time to train your brain to mask out. Think of them as 96kbps mp3's quality-wise (although without the abraisve digital audio artefacts and sonic emptiness). And Videocassettes, as you call them, are potentially somewhat better (mainly because of higher tape speeds and wider track bands), but they're still no hell.

Then again, I guess you're talking about shifting wma's to cassette, so I'm sure the later you'll never notice the difference.

Re:DRM

[ePhil_One]

Same reason Steve Jobs has ranted against DRM, yet Apple enjoys their lock-in due to DRM.

1) Apple's DRM has always allowed burning of unencumbered CD's. Thus, if something similar happened at iTunes, worst case is they would need to burn their music to CD to move it to a new computer w/o DRM.

2) Steve Job's position is that the Musci companies have forced DRM on him. He stuck to his guns early in the iPod days when it was an expensive player everybody was sure would bomb to ensure such consumer freindly features, such as the ability to burn effectively unlimited unencumbered CD's, were a part of the DRM. Jobs is enough of an ruthless visionairy that he may have forseen this outcome (iPod/iTunes lock in aiding market dominance) but more likely he saw it as a requirement for acceptance (vs spending 99 cents on a song that can ONLY play on the iPod)

3) Apple now sells non-DRM music through iTunes

Apple hater or not, seems you could at least recognize #1 is a huge difference between MS's service and iTunes.

Re:DRM

[remmelt]

Ownership, at least in our neck of the woods, implies something tangible to own. You can own a car, or a book, or even a dog. "Music" or "a song" cannot be owned as such.

However, it's copyrightable, trademarkable, etc, and all with good reason.

As for your assertion that you own the media (correct) AND the content on that media, this is for the courts to decide.

Let's not confuse copyright holder with owner here.

Re:DRM

[Znork]

Who cares about the "media"? It is just a transport mechanism.

It is also the only thing that is actual property. You own a blue chair. You own a CD with a pattern on it.

What matters is the content.

You own the property and all that is on it. The content isn't it's own property, the content is an impression on the physical media.

The Right to Copy, the copyright, is the right to control the production of copies of that pattern, it is not ownership of the media or the actual pattern on that media.

Now if I did truly own the contents on a physical piece of media, such as a music CD, i could do whatever I wanted to with it.

You can do whatever you want to with it. You can destroy it. You can paint over it. You can play it backwards. You can burn it. You can sell it. Try doing that to 'someone elses property'.

The only things you cannot do with it are the limitations to your property rights inherent in copyright legislation. Like copying it.

You seem to want to argue that I have actual ownership and control over property and that copyright law merely limits the actions I can perform with said property.

Not merely arguing it, it's an actual fact. According to me and most of the actual judicial system (see, first sales doctrine, exhaustion of rights, etc), apart from certain parties that like to confuse intellectual monopoly rights with actual property (do note that in many languages, as well as in english pre-WIPO, it's referred to as immaterial rights, without the propagandistic and faulty 'property' addition.)

Why do we say, "Bob sold the movie and book rights to his story to some studio in Hollywood"? Bob OWNED the content first. He was granted ownership by a copyright.

Bob owned the first incarnation of that content. Bob, owns the Right to Copy, the copyright for that content. Bob is thus the only one who can actually produce copies of that content.

You even say it yourself; Bob sold the movie and book _rights_ to his story. The right to produce _copies_ of Bob's story. He didn't sell the 'story' or sell the 'book', in which case they'd get a legally produced copy they could do whatever they wanted with. Except for the actions limited and reserved for copyright. Which, for a studio that would need to produce copies, might be quite crippling. Therefore they need to acquire parts of the _monopoly rights_, which are contracted with the author. If you must purchase parts of the actual _copyright_, to allow you to _copy_, then you must sign a contract.

If you do not need these rights and are sold a _copy_, then you own that _copy_, including the _content_ of that copy.

just as it recognizes that we own literary, music, dramatic, or artistic works.

No we don't. Again, we can own the temporary right to prevent others from producing more copies, we don't own the actual incarnations and copies of the work once they are sold.

When the copyright expires, the government is stating that the artist no longer possesses ownership of the work.

That would be eminent domain. There is no judicial indication that any such thing is happening. No tax deduction, no replacement of losses, no nothing.

Because it isn't, nor has it ever been, property. It is a temporary, government enforced, right to control what others can do with their property. The only thing that happens is that that right ceases and anyone possessing a copy of the material can do anything they want with it.

It is no more 'property' than the right to receive a welfare check is 'property'. When it ceases it's not a property you own that's taken away, it's a temporary government grant of a sort.

There is a change in "ownership".

There is no change in ownership. Nobody gets a note that 'you now own this song'. Nobody gets to declare income for suddenly getting something of a certain value.

When the copyright is gone, you have all rights to do whatever you wish with your prop

Re:DRM

[jemtallon]

Yeah. And I upgraded my Ubuntu without entering a key either.

Re:DRM

[operagost]

compact cassette features CD quality sound

Not even with type IV metal.

20-22,000 hertz and 70 db dynamic range

Only with Dolby C.

Videocassettes have similar properties.

About the same performance as a type I cassette, in Hi-Fi mode.

Re:DRM

[Opportunist]

Umm... "Do as I say, don't do as I do".

(Yeah, I dare say it here, I got plenty of karma to burn)

Re:DRM

[node 3]

Same reason Steve Jobs has ranted against DRM, yet Apple enjoys their lock-in due to DRM.

Unfortunately, I forgot the logic behind this, but I'm sure someone will chime in. iTunes would drop DRM from every song they sell if the labels would let them.

Re:DRM

[node 3]

You do realize that Microsoft might actually be trying to demonstrate that DRM is indeed a tool of evil. That's absurd. MS is the world's biggest proponent of DRM.

Re:DRM

[The_DoubleU]

I have an iPod for 2 years now.
Never bought a song from iTunes, only bought from eMusic or ripped from my CD collection.
Since the offered DRM free tunes, I have bought about 5 albums. So yeah, by offering DRM free Apple has gained a customer.

Re:DRM

[node 3]

DRM-free music on iTunes costs the same as DRM'd music.

Re:DRM

[Opportunist]

No, the average Joe isn't DRM conscious. Because he doesn't know jack about it. It's not like it's in any way advertised, or any TV show reports about it.

He also doesn't expect something like this to exist. He is used to having his music available on some medium, and he is used to media shifting. He has done it since the age of the vinyl record, since the age of the 8track. Why should that change now that copying is easier than ever?

Realize that Mr. Joe changes computers maybe once every 5 years. That time has not come since the advent of DRM. His music still works. And even in this case, his music will continue to "work" for another few years. Until he buys his next PC. Then, and only then, he will suddenly realize that his music collection is data garbage. When asking for help, he will hear that he may purchase all his music anew and may safely dump what he has into the bit bucket.

Then, and only then, people will start wisen up about DRM. Not a moment sooner. You can tell them, you can berate them, you can yell until you're mute and they're deaf, they won't listen. It's cheap, it's comfortable, so why listen to that loonie yelling at you that the sky is falling. It works, can't you see? Another computer? Oh c'mon, until then it's at least 3 more years, and by then they'll invent something to break that encryption. Or, if they are really, really naive, "this is (insert big studio name), they can't do that to all of their customers and piss them off!"

Re:DRM

[16Chapel]

Yes, but lack of DRM can be a problem if you're an artist or copyright holder. And lack of DRM is a problem for the customer if it means that no-one is prepared to release their music as a download - it effectively removes that choice from the customer.

Look, DRM is a compromise, and not a very good one at that, but this view that it's there ONLY to serve 'the man' is shortsighted.

Re:DRM

[Opportunist]

Since you don't own music (you know, if you did, copying, yaddayadda), what we're dealing here with is basically a license. I am fairly sure that the contract said explicitly that it's a temporary license to listen to it.

What I could see, if such a thing is possible in the US, is a suit based on customer protection laws concerning highly unusual clauses in contracts. Because until now, timed licenses on content are anything but the norm.

Re:DRM

[Opportunist]

*chewchewchew*

Needs salt.

Re:DRM

[Didion Sprague]

I'd also whack the marketing genius who came up with the "Plays for Sure" label upside the head.

In this case, the marketing gaff is as bad as the DRM itself. (And it also makes one wonder how much DRM and marketing go hand-in-hand. Microsoft seems to have an issue lately with marketing snafus. They've always had issues, yes -- but the idea of "Plays For Sure" and "Vista-capable" makes me realize that marketing [in general] is even more bullshit than I'd always suspected.)

Re:DRM

[__aaxwdb6741]

I didn't know that. Thanks for the correction.

Are there any cases of the same track being available in both formats? Do they still cost the same to the end-user?

Re:DRM

[Opportunist]

That's maybe the whole problem rolled up into a single sentence. And also why I don't "protect" my software anymore (provided I don't hand it out anyway and sell the service tacked to it).

It is no problem for an experienced cracker to remove any sort of protection mechanism from any kind of content, be it music, movie or software. You even have automated mechanisms for it by now, so even a non-technical person can do it easily. Thus, DRM does not stop anyone from copying anything if they are so inclined to break the law. And whether they break the law for circumventing DRM or for distributing the content illegally does really not matter.

It's like making it illegal to explode a nuclear bomb in a town. Duh, I'm killing millions, which by itself is illegal and certainly more severely so than however the law against detonating the bomb could be.

The only person suffering from any kind of protection scheme is the legal customer. And thus you, the manufacturer, suffer. One, you have way more support calls because you can rest assured that their hardware will for some reason not be compatible to your DRM mechanism. And if you don't care, your goodwill will suffer. If you continue making business, you will only do so if the customer can be forced to buy with you (as it is with monopoly positions like MS enjoys, or the various music studios, since you have to buy with them if you want to hear a certain artist). Force, though, is a rather bad way of selling, for your customer will actively start looking for alternatives, he will try to find a way to continue his life without your product, either by doing without your stuff or, as soon as he finds an at least halfway acceptable alternative, switching to it.

Re:DRM

[node 3]

I didn't know that. Thanks for the correction.

Are there any cases of the same track being available in both formats? Do they still cost the same to the end-user? Any music that's available in iTunes Plus format (the non-DRM, 256kbps format) is not available in the original format (FairPlay, 128kbps).

It's interesting to note that for the same price, you not only get rid of the DRM, but also double the bit rate.

Re:DRM

[__aaxwdb6741]

I guess it costs a lot of money to infect tracks with DRM...

Re:DRM

[serviscope_minor]

I'll copy the songs to my audio cassette deck.*

Why not digitize them directly using an audio cable out of your computer and in to another one? You're not going to need a vast stack of tapes, and neither will your music rapidly degrade below hi-fi quality with playing.

Also, you might be able to automate it so that you have one song per file. Maybe.

Re:DRM

[LWATCDR]

No lack of DRM isn't a problem if your an artist or copyright holder. Piracy is a problem if your an artist or copyright holder.
The thing is that DRM has never stopped piracy.
It only effects honest users that buy the material. It is a terrible solution the to the problem of piracy. It is totally ineffective AND it punishes the honest consumer.
It is the wost of all possible worlds.

Unlike some people I am not pro piracy at all. I do think it is theft. But I will not have my rights stepped on by a big company just because they feel that they are getting cheated out of that new private island.
I don't pirate and I do not tolerated being treated like a thief.

Re:DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessarily... it might have been the strategy right from the start...

Re:DRM

[Xtravar]

I was merely pointing out that the iTunes/iPod monopoly on online music is entirely due to DRM, while Steve Jobs speaks against DRM. The motivation behind this seemingly illogical move is similar to the hypothetical situation of Microsoft purposely proving DRM to be 'bad' by discontinuing their servers. The other facts aren't really pertinent to this discussion.

Am I incorrect in my assumption that you can't play other online stores' DRM formats on the iPod, and that you can't play Apple's DRM format on other portable players?

It doesn't really matter that Apple 'appears' to want to do good. What matters is the reflection of the current market.

Re:DRM

[LunaticTippy]

You don't have to resort to magnetic tape. Fire up Audacity or whatever audio program you like and record straight off the sound card.

Re:DRM

[harrkev]

The thing is, I could easily imagine Apple running a "play for shure" ad which would soundly poke Microsoft with a big, sharp, pointed stick. Then, tell people that there is no guarantee that the same thing won't happen with the Zune.

Finally, advertising that iTunes has a lot of DRM-Free songs.

I hope this happens. I still am not convinced that Apple is not evil, but my impression is that Apple is evil in a "street mugger" sort of way, while Microsoft is evil in a "mass-murderer & child molestor" sort of way.

Re:DRM

[electrictroy]

>>>>>compact cassette features CD quality sound

>"Not even with type IV metal.

Oh ye of little faith. The human ear can NOT hear the difference between a Dolby B Type II chrome cassette and a CD. They have virtually equal specifications for frequency (20-22,000 hertz). I can copy a CD to a cassette and it will sound exactly the same; you can not hear the difference.

Re:DRM

[monxrtr]

It is the government that is recognizing that we own the land, just as it recognizes that we own literary, music, dramatic, or artistic works. Then you are responsible for your "property" and its effects. If I am annoyed by a jingle played on public air waves, then you must assume financial responsibility for your harm. How about a class action lawsuit for music which causes mental distress? We have evidence of music being played in military operations to cause the enemy psychological distress. And the psychological damage the "property" of the music industry causes is more than the total revenue income it has brought in. So I want big time class action damages assessed against all those involved in putting annoying commercial jingles into peoples' heads.

Not to mention you don't own any of the fundamental pieces of ideas which your claims are circumscribing. Building a house next to your neighbor's houses does not transfer ownership of your neighbor's house as an amendment to your property claim.

Does anybody own the word "The"? Nope. And anytime the word "The" is being circumscribed in a copyright claim it is by definition invalid, and we the public demand you stop infringing on our public domain word "The". The End. For Joo. So multiply every copyright claim infringement of public domain property by $150,000, and all the assets of all artists belong to the public domain. So pay up bitches!

Re:DRM

[Fweeky]

Not exactly a double-blind test, but in my experience the artifacts introduced are negligible. It depends on the track, and the sound system, and the environment, and on whether you know what various types of artifact sound like. Ultimately, I'm not willing to pay for lossy music anyway, because there's always going to be some track where the compression fails to be transparent, and there's just no need for it.

Still less time than traveling to a store, and less cost than buying the full albums ($10 per song on average versus $0.99) $10 per song? Did inflation get really bad in the US while I wasn't looking? ;)

Also, here in the UK we seem to get to pay something like £1.20 per track, which is over $2. I'm *definitely* not willing to pay for lossy music at that price.

I'm glad you've had good experiences with buying music online. Not really; in my experience it's slow, stupid, buggy, overpriced and has limited choice, especially if like me you demand FLAC. Things are moving slowly in the right direction at least, especially when it comes to independents, but there's still a long way to go.

Re:DRM

[AdamThor]

I find myself thinking the same thing about steam, but everyone seems to love valve.

Re:DRM

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

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?

I'm guessing that you've never worked with Microsoft on any sort of project? Microsoft, like many large companies, does not build a project team from the different specialty areas (networking, web services, databases, etc). Instead they maintain separate departments with people that only work on one or two tasks. What this means is that if you're hosting an application for them that uses, say, a Passport login and a web service run by Microsoft, then you're not going to have a contact at Microsoft that knows the whole picture and can help you troubleshoot issues. Instead, you're going to have to call the group that handles Passport, then you're going to have to call the group that handles web services, then the networking group, and no one you talk to is going to know anything about the application you're working on. Hell, sometimes Microsoft doesn't even have their own project managers, they contract that work out to some other party, eg. Unisys actually does a lot of Microsoft's internal technical support. The only people at Microsoft that know the details of your project may well be a bunch of non-technical people in the business group.

With this understanding, I think it becomes clear why Microsoft needs to shut those servers down. It's probably costing them quite a bit of time and resources to keep all of the various departments informed as to what needs to be done to support the licensing servers.

Re:DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I incorrect in my assumption that you can't play other online stores' DRM formats on the iPod, and that you can't play Apple's DRM format on other portable players?

Restricting yourself to DRM'd music format, yes. You could take a DRM iTunes -> CD -> MP3 -> other player, effectively stripping the DRM, but that doesn't fit the bounds of your arguement. But, this point I contest...

I was merely pointing out that the iTunes/iPod monopoly on online music is entirely due to DRM,

The iPod monopoly is more a result of good design and market inertia. I had several "digital music players" before getting an iPod, they all sucked for various reasons, and I didn't have high hopes for the iPod either. Turns out I was wrong. When I replace my player, I could easily re-rip my entire collection to MP3 (I encoded everything in Apple Losseless first, then converted to DRM-less AAC for transfer to the iPod, so re-encoding won't cost anything extra in quality but a few overnight hours of CPU time). But I'll buy another iPod because of design and familiar interface, not because I'm locked in by DRM. The numbers show the majority of iPod owners have never bought a song off iTunes, so while there may be a few people "locked in" by Apple's DRM who want to go to another player (and whose collections of iTunes songs are large enough to make Burning to CD to re-encode a difficult), claims it even a serious factor in the iPod's market dominance is laughable.

Quite the converse, I'm sure its the iPod's market dominance driving the success of iTunes, which is now making the studios realize the trap DRM has placed THEM in, either submit to Apple's DRM conditions and remain trapped, or go DRM-less so you don't shut out the a signfiicant portion of the market. Perhasp you don't remember teh early days of iTunes, when studios played chicken w/ Jobs, refusing to let iTunes sell their music unless he changed the DRM term sto be less consumer freindly (no CD burning). The pressure was to fold so iTunes would carry ALL the major labels, that was the only way Jobs could make iTunes a success; and more restrictive DRM would surely have created a stronger lock in, if that was Steve's goal.

I'm no fool, I know Steve Jobs is an jerk with his own agenda, but folks who conjure crazy realities where Apple marketing brainwashes folks into buying iPods and the lock in of DRM is the only reason most iPod owners by new iPod's irks me more. Just admit you hate Apple for completely irrational reasons (or maybe rational ones, like how the kill a kitten for every iPod made to trap its soul in the device, adding to teh cuteness factor)

Re:DRM

[ecxman]

When the music was purchased, you are given a license from the vendor that sold it to you. They each have there own licensing cluster for the music they sell. The URL for that cluster is embedded in the license. So MS shutting down their servers will not affect other services.

Re:DRM

[node 3]

I guess it costs a lot of money to infect tracks with DRM... Not really.

It's clear you are starting with the conclusion (Apple loves DRM and uses it to lock people into iPods), and adjusting your theory at each stage, while keeping the conclusion the same.

For some perspective, the average iPod owner has something like 20 songs from the iTunes store (I'll even assume all 20 have DRM, even though perhaps a third are DRM-free). If people were really locked into the iPod, that would mean they would rather *not* buy an iPod, but they're more or less forced into it. Given that statistic above, the average "iPod-locked consumer" would only have to spend an extra $20 to leave the iPod for some other player (that's assuming they really want each of those 20 songs enough to re-buy them). They can even move away for free by burning those 20 songs to CD and re-ripping.

Given the ease with which people can leave the iPod, Apple's whole-hearted move away from music DRM, and the fact that Apple sold over 10 million iPods last quarter, I don't think it's even remotely fair to say that Apple is using the iTunes DRM to lock people into the iPod.

Re:DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

No, proof that the real purpose of DRM is to make you keep paying over and over again for content you thought you had already purchased. Download 1000 songs from iTunes to your iPod, then have it broken, lost, or stolen... oh, so sorry, you need to "buy" all those songs again!

Re:DRM

[qzulla]

Good luck with that.

qz

Re:DRM

[mabhatter654]

exactly, you OWN the shiny piece of plastic. You may keep it, watch it, and sell that EXACT piece of plastic to somebody else like any other property. What Copyright prohibits is for you to make a copy of the material on that shiny plastic to any other piece of shiny plastic, or the internet and reproduce a copy that is transfered to another person, the Govt has given somebody an exclusive right to do that thing.

DRM exists at this point primarily to keep you from exercising the "sale" rights... time shifting, spaceshifting (to places in your ownership, just like a CD) and to resell the material to another person without asking permission, often not at all.

In particular, iTunes is very particular that you "own" and are responsible for the tracks. They do not generally provide backup copies just like a store does not provide replacements for broken music CDs. For iTunes, they've pretty much sealed up that you get to keep the track if they tried revoking they would have big trouble. The rentals are VERY specific that they will be erased, and the ownership issue is very much the heart of the super strict viewing and deleting requirements so there is no confusion for the customer.

Microsoft has kept the issue ambiguous and allowed people to do whatever, relying on the ever changing TOS you automatically agree to every time you get any kind of software upgrade. So even if you might have "owned" the tracks before, they'll just give you the backup "fix" next week, update the DRM, and allow themselves whatever contract terms they need to make this legal. I'd be really fun to see the "ever-changing-TOS" actually challenged in court.

Re:DRM

[mabhatter654]

Copyright got way more powerful in the 1970's when some court called "reading to ram" vs. "executing" vs. "hard drive" storage as separate acts of "copying". That gave media providers all sorts of extra rights they really should have over things like books, simply because you have to "copy" the media electronically to use it.

That's RMS added the "0th" right, to type programs into the computer, store them and execute them, as the first thing in the GPL. He saw these legal tricks coming almost 20 years ago!!! It's like they use his warning as an instruction manual.

Re:DRM

[nine-times]

I've never worked with Microsoft, but I've tried to get support from them. From my point of view, it seems like it wouldn't cost much money to support these servers with the same level of support as they do with their other products. That is to say, how expensive can it be to keep a couple people on staff in an Indian help center, and have them not answer your questions and not help you with anything?

Re:DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay. All you out there with DRM music, grab any one of the available programs that allow you to record thru the audio card and make copies of the music. Granted it won't be "CD quality" but it will be pretty darn good.

Always remember: If you can listen to it, you can record it.

Re:DRM

[Squozen]

A little more than what? DRM-free music costs the same as DRM-ed music on the iTMS these days.

Maybe I am confused.

Brilliant

[conteXXt]

simply brilliant.

At last Microsoft makes the case AGAINST DRM.

Thank you gentlemen.

Re:Brilliant

[Artuir]

Too bad absolutely nothing is gonna change, huh?

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, think about it: if all 54 customers who bought DRM'ed WMA tracks unite.... they could.... ehm..... write an angry letter to Microsoft?

Re:Brilliant

[SirSlud]

Why not? The market spoke pretty hard here - their shit went out of business, and while its nice when the law can protect people from their own shortsightedness, I'm not convinced DRM is such a technology that needs regulation. Yet?

Lots of companies have backed off or weakened their DRM to more reasonable levels due to consumer backlash (sony, anyone?) As big a cynic of the 'correctness' of the invisible hand as I am, I really havn't seen DRM as an example of a technology that restricts customers to the point where they can't reply via the market.

Re:Brilliant

[jank1887]

FairUse4WM FTW!

Re:Brilliant

[Greyfox]

Divx made that case a decade ago. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

It may be worth pointing out that MS probably have little interest in DRM themselves, on their own. They don't produce music, and while they may sell some, it's so far removed from their core business as to be entirely irrelevant.

The reason they've stuffed vista chock full of DRM, for example, is not that they themselves want it, it's that they are/were trying to cowtow to the *AAs: they want to make sure windows stays/becomes the dominant OS for media playback of all kinds.

Unfortunately, the customers hate it, and MS are the ones taking the flak for that, so they're caught between a rock and a hard place. And therefore, it may well be that they're doing this BECAUSE they know it'll annoy customers so that they can turn to the *AAs and say, "oh look, the customers really aren't accepting this, you need to give up your extreme position".

(And again, the reason why they'd want to do that in the first place and why they'd care is that THEY are the ones getting blamed for DRM.)

Now If

[Prince Vegeta SSJ4]

They would only turn of the servers that supply Vista "updates"

Re:Now If

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't funny.

Re:Now If

[93 Escort Wagon]

They would only turn of the servers that supply Vista "updates" How would anyone notice?

Re:Now If

[cgenman]

They're way ahead of you.

Re:Now If

[neomunk]

It would be if you had dumped your MS stock before the Vista fiasco began.

Re:Now If

[Anonymous Coward]

they're distributing Vista via the intertubes?

Within terms of agreement?

[DoofusOfDeath]

Do the original terms of the sale/license agreement permit Microsoft to do this?

And if so, does this show that the product, even as initially sold, was defective, unfit for purpose, or deceptively advertised?

Re:Within terms of agreement?

[Mateo13]

I'm sure they have a clause in there that they can change the agreement at any time without notice. So if the original agreement doesn't allow for this all they'd have to do is whip up a new one and tada! it's legal.

Re:Within terms of agreement?

[astrosmash]

Do the original terms of the sale/license agreement permit Microsoft to do this?

And if so, does this show that the product, even as initially sold, was defective, unfit for purpose, or deceptively advertised? It's not first time in history a music format has become obsolete. Although, in this case it's never been easier to transfer your music to another format.

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.

Re:Within terms of agreement?

[belg4mit]

The format isn't obsolete, the dude you gave the key to your record vault to has gone and chucked it in the trash.
Not being able to get to the media is different from not being able to use the media if it's accessible.

Re:Within terms of agreement?

[AndyCR]

Do the original terms of the sale/license agreement permit Microsoft to do this?
That clause should go over well. "We reserve the right to deny you use of what you paid for whenever and however we wish."

They are so quick to apply property metaphors to data (copying as "theft", intellectual works as "intellectual property", finite distribution of an infinite object, etc.). Why aren't they applying it here? How would you feel if your toaster disappeared because Sunbeam decided not to make toasters anymore? Furthermore, how would you feel if a little card came with your toaster saying that might happen?

Re:Within terms of agreement?

[setagllib]

It may not be enforceable. A lot of EULAs aren't, or aren't confirmed to be.

Re:Within terms of agreement?

[sqrt(2)]

EULAs are legally questionable at best. It's not certain if they are even enforceable at all. A EULA certainly does not hold as much weight as a real legal contract, which is what companies like MS are trying to make them out to be.

Re:Within terms of agreement?

[Malevolyn]

Well of course. The whole EULA system is based on circumstance. MS (and the judicial system, I guess) would assume the following: I installed the software in question, therefore I agreed to the EULA. No other way about it. That's 100% circumstantial if I ever saw it. They are assuming I did something just because "that's how it's supposed to be done." There's no possible way to extract and manually install software.

Re:Within terms of agreement?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Yeah, I'm sure Microsoft and their lawyers never thought about this.

Re:Within terms of agreement?

[TheLink]

Some kid (minor) or someone else could have installed it for you (whether you noticed it or not).

Contracts are not binding on minors.

Re:Within terms of agreement?

[badasscat]

The whole EULA system is based on circumstance. MS (and the judicial system, I guess) would assume the following: I installed the software in question, therefore I agreed to the EULA. No other way about it. That's 100% circumstantial if I ever saw it.

That's only partially the point. The main point is that a EULA is only as enforceable as its contents are legal in and of themselves. I'm not convinced that it's legal to sell somebody something, then revoke their ability to use it. Imagine buying a car, and the seller puts a clause in the contract that says "I reserve the right to come to your house at a time of my own choosing and shoot the car full of buckshot. I will face no repercussions for this." That would never hold up in court because the act itself is 100% illegal; in fact it would break several laws, not just one (vandalism, defacement, trespassing, wreckless endangerment, weapons violations, noise ordinances, etc). Simply put, the right for the seller to shoot a shotgun at a car in a driveway is not legally the buyer's to give.

It's the same principle by which a store putting up a sign saying "not responsible for lost or stolen articles" does not mean they're *actually* not responsible. They may in fact be responsible. The sign itself doesn't give them any legal shielding. All a sign can do is advise people of what the store's responsibilities actually are, but it can't change or cancel those responsibilities.

A contract has to be a legal contract to be binding - it has to follow the law. Every EULA is different so while some EULA's are probably enforceable, others no doubt aren't. I've seen EULA's that had obviously been written with no legal counsel whatsoever, they were so ridiculous. The bottom line is you cannot sign away your basic rights as either a citizen or as a consumer with a contract. If a seller is obligated by law to act in a certain way, they can't get out of that with a EULA.

I haven't read the MSN Music EULA, but this idea that people don't actually own what they've paid for and that they acknowledge that in a EULA has not really been tested in court to my knowledge. Generally speaking, even for a *legal* contract to be valid, both parties have to know what they're agreeing to. So MS would have a pretty high burden in any court case - they would have to prove first of all that every part of the EULA was legally enforceable (which I doubt is the case), then they would have to prove that their customers actually understood what they were agreeing to (which I know is *not* the case).

Of course, some of this does depend on where the case is tried. Contract laws differ from state to state and individual judges may have different interpretations of those laws. But the basic fact is that EULA's can't make laws; they can only serve as an enforcer of existing laws, and both sides have to understand any contract that they enter into.

Re:Within terms of agreement?

[dgatwood]

IANAL, but IMHO, such a clause in the case of a complete revocation (without cause) of all rights obtained under such a contract has about as much chance of holding up in court as an absolute waiver of liability in a case of gross negligence. That is to say... no chance whatsoever.

Those clauses are what I like to call "frustro idiota" (pardon my Latin)---to trick the layman---terms whose primary purpose is not to truly waive liability for damages, but rather, to make the layman assume that he or she has no standing to sue.... I would love to see that term appear in a legal dictionary someday (with whatever grammatical corrections may be needed, of course). :-)

Re:Within terms of agreement?

[caluml]

Not being able to get to the media is different from not being able to use the media if it's accessible. Technically, it's different. The effective end result is the same though.

Re:Within terms of agreement?

[FireFury03]

Technically, it's different. The effective end result is the same though.

Not really - when a format becomes obsolete you usually get a bit more notice. I mean, I still have tapes and vinyl - I can still play them both (hell, I can still buy brand new players for them too...)

iTunes

[eldavojohn]

And if you don't buy the non-DRM iTunes songs (meaning you buy the regular iTunes music) this is exactly something you have to look forward to in the future. Some legal action by the RIAA or what have you causes Apple to revoke DRM licenses and/or stop supporting iTunes client applications.

Never forget that DRM means you are dependent on a company ... as long as you want to be able to access that music, the company has to let you.

Which is why I buy from Amazon (or if the band's site supports/suggest another) non-DRM MP3 format.

Please do not respond with "which is why I buy all my songs for $0.00 from a site called Bittorrent posts." I do tire of those ... we all already know the majority of slashdotters have the balls/lack the brains to defy the RIAA blatantly in that manner.

Re:iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

But here's the thing: If Apple revoked all DRM tomorrow, you can still burn an audio CD of each of your DRM albums, and re-rip it in whatever format you like. So you're not ENTIRELY at Apple's mercy.

I agree it's not ideal, and I personally hate the scum that is DRM, but it's just worth mentioning that Apple does give you an out in this case.

Re:iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually iTunes is now offering free DRM music. I don't know if it's possible for all its songs, but it goes under the itunes plus banner.

Re:iTunes

[Lemmy Caution]

But here's the thing: If Apple revoked all DRM tomorrow, you can still burn an audio CD of each of your DRM albums, and re-rip it in whatever format you like. So you're not ENTIRELY at Apple's mercy. This is true with the MSN Music files, too. And it's still crappy. And lossy.

Re:iTunes

[mortonda]

Of course, if the lossy-ness of this bothers you, why did you buy this format in the first place?

For most of the junk out there, you don't really lose much.

Re:iTunes

[Lemmy Caution]

There's a difference between CD -> audio compression loss, and CD -> audio compression -> CD -> audio compression loss.

Re:iTunes

[cgenman]

Emusic. The #2 US retailer of downloadable music has no DRM. It does have an annoyingly complex pricing model, but it is still amazingly cheap. Last month I discovered an artist I liked, and I downloaded every track they ever made for around 20 dollars.

Indies only, of course. Amazon.com for Mariah Carey. Emusic for The Pinker Tones and a lot of other great bands.

Re:iTunes

[TheSkyIsPurple]

I thought Apple stated that if they shut the service down, they'd release the master keys.

My Google-fu is weak, so maybe my hallucinogens are acting up again...

Re:iTunes

[FireFury03]

I thought Apple stated that if they shut the service down, they'd release the master keys.

Is that written into the contract the customer agreed to when they signed up to iTunes? I can't imagine the receivers honouring some verbal promise if Apple goes under...

Re:iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

the majority of slashdotters have the balls OMGPONIES!
Did I get it right this time?

Ob "Thank you, Microsoft!"

[vrmlguy]

I keep trying to explain to people why DRM is bad. This makes my job easier.

Re:Ob "Thank you, Microsoft!"

[mortonda]

It's easy. DRM is designed to make it hard to copy music, thus supposedly blocking piracy. But what happens when you want to copy the music to a new computer because your old computer is too slow? DRM will eventuall prevent that.

even for M$.

[twitter]

How much money are they losing on this idiocy?

Re:even for M$.

[westbake]

How much better would Vista have been without DRM?

Re:even for M$.

[Moridineas]

Well, having used Vista for a couple of weks now, I would say not significantly.

My problems with Vista are the UAC, breaking EAX sound, shitty, SHITTY control panel layout, and in general UI speed.

I guess you could blame speed on somewhat on DRM, but that's really the least of my complaints.

Re:even for M$.

[Anonymous Coward]

arent most of these problems coming to xp with sp3? i know uac and breaking eax are...

Re:even for M$.

[willyhill]

Anyone replying to this thread should be aware that "westbake" is the same person who posted the original comment. Here is essentially the same thread.

twitter posts at -1 for trolling, so he has seven different accounts that he uses to shill up his comments and try to game the moderation system.

Re:even for M$.

[ls -la]

How much money are they losing on this idiocy?

Since everyone affected by this already bought their music, none. At least in the short term, they're saving money by not keeping the servers up, and as for the long term, those who bought music from MS aren't likely to switch to any other OS, so I'd say they're not likely to lose a penny.

Re:even for M$.

[d0mokun]

How much better would Vista have been without DRM?

Does anybody really, truly know? I've used Vista since it came out, as have a lot of friends and family.. not run into any DRM yet. Then again that's not to say it isn't there- I've just not come across it. But who here really has run into the dreaded 'Vista DRM'? Who out of the whole Vista userbase has? I'd hazard as guess that it's an absolute minority of the users.

Re:even for M$.

[fwarren]

so I'd say they're not likely to lose a penny.

Too bad more people don't have more music like this. The bigger and badder the burn. The sooner people will be in the know and avoid DRM. All music with DRM is a rental. And someday the rental office will close down. So even if you want to pay rent, there will be no one to take it.

Congress will either mandate that Apple keeps their servers going...or the Federal Government will take over the job.

Re:even for M$.

[Murrquan]

It should only take 1-2 CDs for an iTunes user to burn his or her (on average) 20 purchased, DRM'ed tracks and be able to play them on any other machine. Not all DRM is created equal.

Re:even for M$.

[colmore]

Good info but I have to ask, are other people's slashdot comments really worth that much of your time?

Re:even for M$.

[hairyfeet]

I don't know about RTM, but they certainly aren't in refresh 2. Hell, refresh 2 doesn't even have that stupid WGA crap, which is nice for me since I got to use it on my two offline XP rigs. I would highly recommend SP3 Refresh 2 even if you never have the intention of letting them online as I average a 15% speed boost from SP3 and saw the biggest boost on the oldest machine of roughly 18%. But of course it depends on your hardware so YMMV.

As for MSN DRM going dark it makes just another example of how DRM equals screwed. Not to mention why anyone would pay good money for DRM audio that'll suck the life right out of your MP3 player is beyond me. Just to see how much overhead it caused for myself I took a non-DRMed set of WMA tracks and put them on my new Sandisk M260. On any of the 3 Sandisk M2XX players my family owns (gotta love how you can change batteries while on the road!) we get an average of 17-20 hours of play, depending on how much track skipping we do. After setting the player to only play the WMA tracks and putting in a fresh battery I BARELY got 11 hours. And if that is WMA without DRM I'd hate to see how much less time I would get with DRM.

Has anyone tried their MP3 player with DRMed WMA like that on MSN? How much quicker did it suck down your battery? Does Apple's Fairplay suck the life out of iPods like WMA sucks it out of MP3 players? But of course this is my 02c based on my own experience with WMA files, YMMV.

Re:even for M$.

[Mr. Beatdown]

That'd be a great idea, except for the fact that even a rudimentary workaround such as the one you describe is, in fact, illegal because of the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. There is no exception for circumvention done for the purpose of fair uses, such as playing your music in your car, or even making a backup copy. Even though the right to perform actions such as these is guaranteed in the Audio Home Recording Act, the DMCA allows anyone producing any copyrighted content (read anyone) to make it illegal to do anything with it in any form other than that which is prescribed by the producer.

Re:even for M$.

[kinabrew]

Actually, iTunes itself supports burning songs from the iTunes Music Store to CD.

And the CD produced is a perfectly normal, non-DRM'd CD.

Re:even for M$.

[Phroggy]

In this case, you're incorrect; the license specifically allows burning DRM-encumbered tracks from the iTunes Store to audio CD, as long as you don't burn a single playlist more than 7 times (you can burn the tracks as many times as you want, but you'll have to create a new playlist).

If you were to re-rip this audio CD with lossy encoding (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, etc.) there would of course be a loss of quality. Also, you can make as many copies as you like of the original DRM-encumbered M4P files, but that's not relevant to this discussion.

Re:even for M$.

[hax0r_this]

You can do that with M$ DRM too.

Re:even for M$.

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

They're going to lose money from jaded customers, from word-of-mouth from said jaded customers, and possibly even certain people refusing to buy Microsoft products. The best possible situation for them is to keep their servers running and keep their vendor lock-in. Anything less is a financial loss.

Re:even for M$.

[MojoStan]

It should only take 1-2 CDs for an iTunes user to burn his or her (on average) 20 purchased, DRM'ed tracks and be able to play them on any other machine. Not all DRM is created equal. Insightful? For chrissakes, RTFA:

• "Of course, MSN Music customers do have one other option: burning all of their music to audio CD and then re-ripping them back to the computer as MP3s, sans DRM. But that's a lossy, lousy solution."

Re:even for M$.

[Bert64]

I imagine it would have a similar impact on an ipod, since the extra cpu power will be needed to decrypt the files...
All the resources being wasted on drm, making players more expensive but inferior (less battery life). DRM is completely anti-consumer, and the sooner the masses wake up and realise the better.

Meanwhile, pirates will continue to enjoy drm-free media on cheaper drm-free audio players (no need to license or implement any drm schemes).

Re:even for M$.

[jhol13]

Well, this has to be the best advertisement for Zune ever.

Or maybe not ...

Re:even for M$.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Burn to audio CD then [sic] re-ripping them back to the computer" is a "lossy" solution? Nonsense! The audio CD is a lossless wav format. Once in that format, which is DRM free, the audio files can be transcoded to FLAC (lossless), OGG (most can't tell the difference in sound), or mp3 (most can't tell the difference, if a decent codec like LAME is used at maximum quality).

Re:even for M$.

[fooDfighter]

It's lossy because burning compressed music to CD does not magically make the quality improve to lossless WAV. Ripping it again to a lossy format then loses a bit more quality as the compressed music is re-compressed.

It's analogous to saving an image in JPG, taking a screenshot of the image (BMP), then saving as JPG again.

Re:even for M$.

[willyhill]

Probably not :)

Re:even for M$.

[Shakrai]

That'd be a great idea, except for the fact that even a rudimentary workaround such as the one you describe is, in fact, illegal because of the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA.

Too bad for RIAA that those provisions are about as enforceable as marijuana prohibition....

Maybe we need a "Piracy Czar" and a "War on Piracy". That should do the trick after a few billion dollars and a couple of decades.

don't worry...

[timmarhy]

... bittorrent has them backed up for you.

Re:don't worry...

[lorenlal]

Actually...
Would that be illegal? If you purchased the music through MSN, and then downloaded an MP3 of the same song, would there be a case against you?

Re:don't worry...

[ricree]

They would still be able to get you for seeding it to others.

Re:don't worry...

[AdamKG]

Yes.

Re:don't worry...

[Creepy Crawler]

Really, who cares?

If I buy stuff and later deactivated without my consent, Im going to take power in my own hands. I dont need some nanny telling me what I will do.

Re:don't worry...

[timmarhy]

they would probably argue there is, but i'm pretty sure you could win based on the fact they sold you the right to listen to song X on digital media, which they reneged on without your consent. contract law is about fairness for both parties, and ripping away something you paid for isn't fair.

Re:don't worry...

[bjorniac]

Well, the main thing they hit you for is uploading (which happens in Kazaa, bittorrent etc) - downloading I think tends to be a grey area.

Fixed/Correct link to original article

[FrozenFrog]

Seems the link in the article is incorrect (or has changed). Correct link is: MS to nuke music DRM

Did Anyone Else See This Coming?

[mfh]

MSFT has a lot of power, and they can't use it properly. Sure they have incorrect philosophies, but they should at least be able to EXECUTE them... but they can't.

Personally if I ever get that much power, I would like to be able to use it to achieve what I want. What would you do with that much power?

Re:Did Anyone Else See This Coming?

[bwy]

MSFT has a lot of power, and they can't use it properly. Sure they have incorrect philosophies, but they should at least be able to EXECUTE them... but they can't.

That is a pretty good point, actually. I guess it proves that being successful is something you have to work every minute of every day at. Just because something good happened to you yesterday and now you have a lot of $$$ in the bank doesn't make it any easier to be successful at something else tomorrow.

In Microsoft's case, they obviously did something right to get most of the PC's in the world running their OS. But they've had some pretty big flops over the last few years. Proof that pumping money into something isn't enough.

Re:Did Anyone Else See This Coming?

[symbolset]

Two chicks at the same time. /ob

Re:Did Anyone Else See This Coming?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Microsoft's case, they obviously did something right to get most of the PC's in the world running their OS

Just to clarify, obviously Stalin did a few things right too then.

Re:Did Anyone Else See This Coming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait... if I'm reading this analogy correctly... DEAR GOD! Ballmer is going to murder 20 million of his own employees!!

Re:Did Anyone Else See This Coming?

[Prisoner's Dilemma]

In Microsoft's case, they obviously did something right to get most of the PC's in the world running their OS. But they've had some pretty big flops over the last few years. Proof that pumping money into something isn't enough.

Only if you count when Apple dropped the ball and allowed a company that stole their UI and makes an inferior product, also take Apples lead position as 'Microsoft doing something right'

Re:Did Anyone Else See This Coming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, they EXECUTE their philosophies just fine.

Carrying them out, implementing them, or anything that doesn't involve shooting them in the back of the head-- not so much.

Sucks to be you

[Firas Zirie]

Well that's just fabulous. Microsoft are basically telling their customers that in a few months your music is precariously balanced on the edge of not playing. How about unlocking all the music and getting over your failure of a music store huh?

Re:Sucks to be you

[Anonymous Coward]

M$ probably signed deals with the RIAA and/or the artists to say that the material would be put out under DRM - I doubt that Microsoft have the right to simply open the license and let those people have non-DRM copies.

OTOH - it seems really doubtful to me that Microsoft couldn't afford to keep the servers alive. Compared to the tens of thousands of computers M$ have up on the net - what does a handful more cost? What's more, the number of people needing this service can only decline over time - pretty soon a single PC on the net would be plenty enough to keep the service running.

It's good to see DRM being shown up for what it is. I feel slightly sorry for the victims - but "I TOLD YOU SO".

Re:Sucks to be you

[Anonymous Coward]

How about unlocking all the music NEVER!

You can take their capital from their cold, dead hands.

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: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.

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.

Re:Internet Archive.

[willyhill]

He posts at -1 for trolling. Now that he is at negative karma, he organizes shill sessions with his seven accounts to game the moderation system.

Anyone replying to any thread in which twitter is posting opens themselves up to be ganged by a gaggle of "people" who amazingly never cease to agree with each other and make the same grammar and spelling mistakes.

Unfortunately most moderators don't realize this and still mod him up.

Re:Internet Archive.

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how you can spend all day trolling slashdot with what, 10 sockpuppets now, and then post a self-evident, everybody-knows-about-it one-liner comment and get modded up to +5.

the moderators are like cops that are pulling you over but never actually call in your plates and don't know that you have an outstanding warrant for hamster felching, so they let you go with a $20 ticket for a broken tail light instead of handcuffing you and taking you away.

it's just amazing.

Re:Internet Archive.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm posting on this article to undo the positive moderation I gave you. I didn't realize you had multiple accounts that actually reply to each other.

You are abusing a system in which the /. community relies. I hope you're proud of yourself.

Re:Internet Archive.

[Malevolyn]

Boy, you really know how to give someone a mental picture.

Re:Internet Archive.

[JFitzsimmons]

That's because there's not supposed to be a concept of "criminal record" in posting. Moderation is dependent on the content of that post and only that post. Karma is the criminal record. Just because twitter made a post doesn't mean that post is automatically devoid of value.

Re:Internet Archive.

[courseofhumanevents]

So you're getting mad at the mods for not modding down a legitimate post because they don't like the user? This is a good thing, twitter's cocksucking notwithstanding.

Re:Internet Archive.

[bh_doc]

A legitimately informative post should be modded as such, regardless of the poster.

Re:Internet Archive.

[willyhill]

I agree. There have been many instances where people on this website were branded as trolls and have returned to good standing within the community by consistently posting actually interesting and/or informative things that deserve to be modded up.

However, after twitter got himself down to karma hell, instead of addressing the reasons for which the community punished him by taking away his karma, he went off and created a little army of sockpuppet accounts, which he uses to actively game the moderation system.

As he is fond of saying, you can't really polish a turd.

Actually, I shouldn't have written that last line about moderation. He will get moderated regardless of what I do, so instead I take a few minutes of my day to warn people about the fact that he is posting and replying to himself with multiple accounts. I certainly wouldn't want to find myself in a situation where the sockpuppet army attacks me, to the usual detriment of my karma. Unlike twitter, most of us only have one account.

Re:Internet Archive.

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

"However, after twitter got himself down to karma hell, instead of addressing the reasons for which the community punished him by taking away his karma, he went off and created a little army of sockpuppet accounts, which he uses to actively game the moderation system."

Wow how interesting! Can you go back to emo drama land please? how much could you care about one idiot poster? do you follow around people you hate irl, talking shit about them? are you some kind of highschooler or *shudder* college student...

find out where he lives and k-line his ass or quit bitchin. people you dont like dont deserve to know it till the last possible minute, by then its far too late.

Re:Internet Archive.

[Vectronic]

Indeed it should... and although I among others appreciate your attempts (WillyHill)... I wouldnt doubt that soon enough your persitence to oust Twitter's little plan is going end up making people just as frustrated with you... especially since you seem to be biting his bait wherever he goes...

Inform those that need to be informed, and then mod him down whenever you can (provided its legitimate, not just out of anger)

He might be annoying at times but that doesnt make his comment about archive.org (or similar) less valid.

Re:Internet Archive.

[maglor_83]

Unfortunately most moderators don't realize this and still mod him up.

Or perhaps most moderators don't care. Its the contents of the post that matter, not the author.

Re:Internet Archive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but that's not the music they've conditioned us to like by playing it on the radio twelve times a day and making titty-filled video clips for.

Damn them for exploiting my love for titties.

Re:Internet Archive.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldnt doubt that soon enough your persitence to oust Twitter's little plan is going end up making people just as frustrated with you... especially since you seem to be biting his bait wherever he goes... I already have become so, and will be moderating 'willyhill' Offtopic whenever possible.

Sadly, no points today :-(.

Hm...

[ChinggisK]

This doesn't just apply to the five different computers that PlaysForSure allows users to authorize Am I the only one that read that the first time as meaning that there are only five former customers of MSN Music?


Sorry, been a long day studying for exams.

Re:Hm...

[PianoComp81]

This doesn't just apply to the five different computers that PlaysForSure allows users to authorize

Am I the only one that read that the first time as meaning that there are only five former customers of MSN Music?

Nope. I did to, and laughed. Too bad it wasn't true.

Re:Hm...

[Anonymous Coward]

No no. You can play a DRM song on upto 5 differnt computers. If the song is authorized by PlayForSure then you can still reauth on differnt computers. Thats what I gathered anyway.

MSN Music today?? DRM Servers?

[brunokummel]

I still listen to music for free, you insensitive clod!

Music on demand

Re:MSN Music today?? DRM Servers?

[Dunbal]

I still listen to your music for free, you insensitive clod!

Fix'd. Ahhh internet.

Hey, my CD still works...

[tjstork]

I have a bunch of CD's that I bought from a record store that went belly up. They still work. Maybe this DRM world ain't all its cracked up to be after all.

Re:Hey, my CD still works...

[vtcodger]

***I have a bunch of CD's that I bought from a record store that went belly up. They still work.***

You, sir are engaged in theft of services. Your access to licensed products terminated when your provider ceased to exist as a legal entity. I hereby inform you that you are LEGALLY OBLIGATED to render those CDs unreadable. You may of course retain the CDs once you have ensured that the LICENSED MATERIAL is unusable. If you fail to comply, you will -- in accordance with laws currently in place -- potentially be liable for 3gazillion, 206 thousand, three dollars and change in economic damages for each unlicensed, playable musical piece in your possession.

Screws For Sure (tm)

[swschrad]

that's Microsoft.

"MSN Music DRM Servers Going Dark In September"

[$RANDOMLUSER]

So, only rap after that then, huh?

/ducks

sorry, sorry, sorry, had to...

Re:"MSN Music DRM Servers Going Dark In September"

[urcreepyneighbor]

I heard Spring Thomas was going to film a video where the server is housed, so... it makes sense.

Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[el_flynn]

I don't see why this is really big news. In fact, this really has got _nothing_ to do with DRM per se. For those who can't see the forest for the trees:

* Company X makes product Y and sells to the public
* Company X does not make enough profit selling product Y and decides to discontinue selling it
* Company X decides to stop supporting product Y (e.g. by making spare parts etc)

How is this any different than, say, Ford discontinuing its Aerostar minivan line?

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[bwy]

How is this any different than, say, Ford discontinuing its Aerostar minivan line? Sure, it is exactly the same. Assuming, of course, that your minivan can only run when authorized. The authorization dongle is connected to your PC, and your PC has a license that you won't be able to transfer to a new PC when your PC dies.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[compro01]

if ford came to your driveway and rendered it permanently undrivable when they stopped making it, no difference at all in that case.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm when ford stops their Aerostar line you can still drive the one you have, buy 3rd party replacement parts/repair existing ones, and refuel it.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this any different than, say, Ford discontinuing its Aerostar minivan line? If ford discontinued the Aerostar, all Aerostars they already sold would still work perfectly fine.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[eiapoce]

How is this any different than, say, Ford discontinuing its Aerostar minivan line? It is different in that you can keep driving the Aerostar and keep finding spare parts from third party vendors or using recycled ones.

Selling imaginary property is much different than selling goods.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[PhireN]

But when Ford discontinues its Aerostar minivan line, there is nothing preventing you from still driving the minivan that you own.
When Microsoft turns off their DRM servers, and you upgrade from XP to vista (or reinstall XP because its now really bloated and slow, or buy a new computer), all the music that you 'own' is impossible to play.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because another company can build replacement parts which you can use to repair it and keep driving your kids to the soccer game.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more like Ford going out of business and all their cars refusing to start from that point on.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[MikeUW]

As I understand it, the difference is that the owner of such a discontinued vehicle is still free to replace any parts as needed, from whatever source he/she can acquire them (e.g., a scrapyard), and the vehicle can still run. You don't need authorization from the original manufacturer to continue using the vehicle for its intended purpose after it has been modified.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[sonofusion82]

I don't see why this is really big news. In fact, this really has got _nothing_ to do with DRM per se. For those who can't see the forest for the trees: * Company X makes product Y and sells to the public * Company X does not make enough profit selling product Y and decides to discontinue selling it * Company X decides to stop supporting product Y (e.g. by making spare parts etc) How is this any different than, say, Ford discontinuing its Aerostar minivan line? No, it is not about M$. It is about DRM. For most cars, even after the manufacturer discontinued the car, we can still repair the car and keep it going for years even with 3rd party or 2nd grade spare parts. But with DRM it is more like, after Ford discontinuing its Aerostar minivan line, the car engine will never start again after another driver tries to drive it.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Waffle Iron]

How is this any different than, say, Ford discontinuing its Aerostar minivan line?

Unlike DRMed music, it's not a federal offense for someone service your minivan when it breaks.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Chris Mattern]

How is this any different than, say, Ford discontinuing its Aerostar minivan line?

Ford discontinuing a minivan doesn't stop me from driving the *one I already bought*, or from obtaining spare parts and having repairs done.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[friedman101]

because your minivan doesn't explode when aerostar goes belly up

i can only assume you typed that moments after huffing from a spray paint can

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[samkass]

Well, to follow up on the parent poster's car metaphor, it's basically like saying they're not going to make any new parts for your car, so you can drive it just fine now but if you want to change anything at all in the future, you can't, and if anything breaks and you need to replace it, you're screwed.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[sc0ob5]

It's different in the sense that you still own the car and can buy after market parts if required and you can on sell it if you want. It really is an unfair comparison. I think a more fair comparison would be if you bought an Aerostar minivan and you could no longer put fuel or people in it.

Needless to say that if you actually bought the license to play music from this store, you probably deserved to loose "your" music.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[el_flynn]

Yes, all the replies to my original post have valid points. But then again, these are the _details_ of it, not the main gist of the story.

Sure, DRM is bad - I'll be the first to admit it - but MSFT shutting servers on products that it no longer supports? What's the big deal about that?

The main point is this, again using the (blast!) car analogy:

* Ford builds two new purpose-built factories to manufacture its Aerostar line
* Ford discontinues its Aerostar
* Ford shuts the two factories

What's the big deal?

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's different because you can get parts for an Aerostar from different suppliers. You can't get DRM licenses from someone else.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[nine-times]

How is this any different than, say, Ford discontinuing its Aerostar minivan line?

Did Ford engineer the Aerostar specifically so that, if they ever discontinued the line, you'd immediately be unable to change the oil or refill the gas tank?

It's one thing if a product happens to have necessary limits. It's another thing for the product to be purposefully and artificially crippled so that it will not function as expected.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[vought]

What's the big deal? Uh, Ford doesn't come to your house and take the keys to your van when they discontinue production?

More proof that car analogies don't work - especially for such a weak argument.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[canajin56]

While you may think that's a ridiculous car analogy, it's not that far from reality. My parents' Saturn car, for example, has a special chip in the key to deactivate the anti-theft immobilizer. Even if you get another key cut at a locksmith, the key will open the door but will not start the car. So you have to spend $25 to get a new key cut by the dealership. If Saturn went under and you lost your key, you could no longer use your car. You can't even hotwire it easily, cus that's the whole point of the immobilizer in the first place.

Except that in this case it would be perfectly legal to get a mechanic to go and rip out the immobilizer circuit, whereas it's against the DCMA to strip the DRM from your WMA files. Then again, who cares about the legality, you can download a stripper to remove DRM from WMA files. It only works if you have the key in your "keyring", so people with MSN Music would have to strip it before changing OS or reinstalling their OS.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[CanadianRealist]

Not at all the same.

With a car, even if whoever made it stops making parts, other suppliers could and likely would continue to supply parts.

No one else can legally authorize Microsoft's DRM for you.
i.e. with the car you still have hope, with DRMed music, you're screwed.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[corsec67]

Aerostars they already sold would still work perfectly fine.

Apparently you missed the part where it is a Ford?

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[vought]

No the analogy breaks down because Ford doesn't come to your house and take your keys away when they stop producing that model of car.

"Sorry, we know we sold you that 2003 Mustang, but now that we've discontinued the Mustang, you'll need to give us your keys and turn over the car."

That's how DRM works, in this case. iTunes is a bit more forgiving. None is perfect, but Microsoft shutting off the servers is particularly egregious.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that it's not entirely different. Eventually, that supply of spare parts will go away, or become prohibitively expensive; Smart people learn when the total cost of ownership of a given item becomes too expensive, and would be better served in replacing said item.

Maybe the people will learn to replace their DRM'ed music with something a little less... DRM-y.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[pfleming]

How is this any different than, say, Ford discontinuing its Aerostar minivan line? When Ford discontinues the Aerostar your kids and your aging poodle with the bladder control problem won't be locked inside with no way to get out. That is assuming that you want to listen to your kids or the dog again.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[setagllib]

And additionally, if you "fix" it with third-party or home-made parts, it's illegal. In fact, the tools you use to fix it may even be illegal to distribute, under the DMCA circumvention clause.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Chris Mattern]

Worse than that. Generally, after-market parts manufacturers can, and do, continue to fabricate spare parts for discontinued car models; in fact, it's a pretty good business. So it's like saying, "we're not going to make any new parts for your car, *and we're going to make sure that nobody else is allowed to, either*".

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[ScrewMaster]

Let me give you a different take, then. Your comment would make perfect sense if Microsoft had not claimed to have sold the music in question (this applies just as much to Apple, for that matter.) By simply removing access to their authorization servers, they've effectively taken ownership of said music from the rightful owners. As all the RIAA supporters out there would no doubht say, they've stolen it. That's exactly what DRM is about ... blurring the lines of ownership. If Microsoft were to be honest about what they're doing, they would admit that and refund the money that all those people paid for now-useless data.

If they were simply renting the music on a pay-for-play basis it would be different, of course, like renting a DVD from Blockbuster. But that's not the way that music was offered. Those customers bought those tracks, or thought they did.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Chris Mattern]

But then again, these are the _details_ of it

No. They're. Not. Ford doesn't COME AND TAKE AWAY YOUR VAN. That is not a DETAIL.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Mateito]

"Sorry, we know we sold you that 2003 Mustang, but now that we've discontinued the Mustang, you'll need to give us your keys and turn over the car."

No, its worst than that, its

"Sorry, you'll need to give us your keys. We'll leave the car in your front lawn where you can stare at it longingly and get more and more pissed at us."

If all goes well, its:

"stare at it longingly until some random Scandinavian comes out of his basement and sends around a code to get the thing running again"

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Todd Knarr]

Because, when Ford shuts down the factories, the Aerostar van you bought doesn't vanish from your driveway, nor does it refuse to unlock it's doors or start when you turn the key.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Dunbal]

Company X decides to stop supporting product Y (e.g. by making spare parts etc)

How is this any different than, say, Ford discontinuing its Aerostar minivan line?

      It's different in that if you're lucky or persistent enough you'll always be able to find spare parts for your Aerostar minivan in some junkyard or on e-Bay. Some creative Taiwanese company might also have compatible parts. However this is like Ford hitting a kill switch on such and such a date, and suddenly all Aerostars in the world stop working on purpose. Doesn't matter if yours was fine or not. Or if you were in the middle of the desert. What is worse, thanks to the DMCA, if you're in the US and try to get your "Aerostar" working again you are now a CRIMINAL.

      I've been here long enough to know about our beloved slashdot car analogies, but sheesh if you can't see the difference, perhaps you need bi-focals after all.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Dunbal]

No, they fixed that after the bad press they got from the Pinto line.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the Aerostar van come in Periwinkle blue? Well then, there's your answer.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[enoz]

Can you possibly still not get it?

Your Minivan will continue to "work" after Ford closes it's DRM Factories, however if you decide to move house you cannot take your Minivan with you.

If you renovate your house, your Minivan will cease to work.

You can never sell your Minivan.

Serves you right for buying a DRM Minivan, I say.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

forest meet trees.

The difference is that Ford sold a physical thing. Ford deciding they were done selling that thing doesn't immediately end all use of said thing.

Microsoft sold an idea and now decided to take it back.

It would be akin to ford recalling all cars forcibly every time they change model lines.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[onefriedrice]

Umm, actually the GP's analogy is much more accurate because MS isn't revoking the licenses that already exist on computers that are now licensed. Therefore, you can still use the files until the computer dies or until the car breaks down, which is what the GP's analogy indicates. Your analogy would indicate that no music could be accessed come September, and that's simply wrong.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[LearnToSpell]

you can download a stripper

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Malevolyn]

Well... the keys part of the metaphor kinda worked. You needs those keys to start the car/play the music.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Malevolyn]

Or just a DRM. "Digital Rights Minivan."

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, when they discontinue the Aerostar, the one you already bought doesn't just stop working when you change the tires.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Bronster]

There's always one, isn't there. Some who just can't resist.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[enoz]

And people would call it a "DRM Van". Digital Rights Minivan Van.

Also if you tried to circumvent your OWN van's security, the DRM Partyvan would turn up at your door.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, why the fuck did you buy an Aerostar? Are you a retard?

BTW, the preceeding was a valid analogy involving a car.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Malevolyn]

Also if you tried to circumvent your OWN van's security, the DRM Partyvan would turn up at your door. You'd be miniv&.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[devilspgd]

Neither analogy is quite right...

Your version implies that you can keep using the car until the car dies, that isn't the case (that would be like saying "you can keep using the files until the files break")

Maybe something like "you can keep driving the car, until your garage door breaks" would be better?

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

And the total cost of ownership for an mp3 is..? Does it accumulate with time like it does for a car? Do you need to repair you mp3 because it's got worn out? ... Sorry, the analogy sucks, no matter how you try, because cars have a limited lifespan for natural reasons, while a piece of music doesn't.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Except that in this case it would be perfectly legal to get a mechanic to go and rip out the immobilizer circuit, whereas it's against the DCMA to strip the DRM from your WMA files.

Actually, the DMCA protects circumvention for fair use. I think playing files for your own private, personal pleasure qualifies as fair use, right?

I've commented on this before.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[enoz]

If this wasn't me I would mod you up for those!

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Alioth]

On a point of pedantry, it's the DMCA, not the DCMA. Although I suppose Digitial Copyright Millennium Act does have a kind of ring to it.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

While you may think that's a ridiculous car analogy, it's not that far from reality. My parents' Saturn car, for example, has a special chip in the key to deactivate the anti-theft immobilizer. Even if you get another key cut at a locksmith, the key will open the door but will not start the car. So you have to spend $25 to get a new key cut by the dealership. If Saturn went under and you lost your key, you could no longer use your car. You can't even hotwire it easily, cus that's the whole point of the immobilizer in the first place.

Except that in this case it would be perfectly legal to get a mechanic to go and rip out the immobilizer circuit, whereas it's against the DCMA to strip the DRM from your WMA files. Then again, who cares about the legality, you can download a stripper to remove DRM from WMA files. It only works if you have the key in your "keyring", so people with MSN Music would have to strip it before changing OS or reinstalling their OS.

If you think that's bad, my Vespa GT 200 scooter also has an electronic key anti-theft immobilizer. It's so secure that the immobilizer circuit is one and the same as the electronic control unit for the engine: you can't rip it out if you want the engine to function.

The best thing about it is if you lose the master key, even Vespa USA can't make a new one unless you replace the whole ECU for a small fee: $500! At least they do provide two non-master electronic keys for your regular use.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

download a stripper? how did I miss that. man, all those times, alone, ...

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[rmezzari]

you can download a stripper

Oh my, can you do it on the internets nowadays? I think I'll never leave my comfy basement again!

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me again about the part where I can download a stripper.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

  Then again, who cares about the legality, you can download a stripper to remove DRM from WMA files.

I had no idea I could pay a stripper to remove DRM from my music. Do you think she'll get glitter all over my keyboard?

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this any different than, say, Ford discontinuing its Aerostar minivan line? Unlike DRMed music, I wouldn't have to purchase a new vehicle to continue driving if the roads are repaved.

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

You lost me after "download a stripper."

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

you can download a stripper
OMGPONIES!

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then again, who cares about the legality, you can download a stripper to remove DRM from WMA files. It only works if you have the key in your "keyring", so people with MSN Music would have to strip it before changing OS or reinstalling their OS.

Isn't technology great?

Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft.

[pharwell]

So you have to spend $25 to get a new key cut by the dealership.

Only $25? Whew! To get a new key for our PT Cruiser it's like 10x that much.

That of course is one thing I can't stand about newer cars. I miss being able to get a car key duped for $1 at Walmart instead of $100+ or $200+ at the dealership

DRM for cars, I'd never thought about it that way.

They'll just go to the Zune store...

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be, by all rights, but just watch people sign up for their new Zune Marketplace and get screwed all over again.

And, no doubt, we'll have a story just like this one for the Zune Marketplace in a few years when they copy some other idea from Apple.

Re:They'll just go to the Zune store...

[voice_of_all_reason]

Well, to its credit, it is crackalackin'...

Free Brown Zunes for everyone?

[tlambert]

"We'll have our compensation somehow."

Free Brown Zunes for everyone?

-- Terry

Re:Free Brown Zunes for everyone?

[Khyber]

More likely an order to make an application to strip the DRM from the music so the consumer can actually use what they paid for. Nothing monetary, mind you. California's too broke to force that from Microsoft.

Re:Free Brown Zunes for everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please. Even *if* MS got sued for such an application, by the time it got through the courts, and the application was finally made, you'd be better off just buying the CDs like you should've done in the first place. Are you really going to wait several years while it trickles through court?

Re:Free Brown Zunes for everyone?

[Khyber]

Who says *I* need to wait? You think I bother with DRM anything? Nope.

Re:Free Brown Zunes for everyone?

[anubi]

Re: "California's too broke to force that from Microsoft."

Remember "Kelo vs. New London", the eminent domain legislation approved by the Supreme Court saying it was OK to take private property for public usage.

I will not say we need to actually penalize companies for breaking their agreement.

<sarcasm>

Just as "Digital Rights Management" laws protect business from unauthorized distribution, a simple mending of those laws to eminent domain abandoned ( unsupported ) intellectual property to the public domain would protect the business right to abandon their responsibility to their paying customer without being held accountable for refunding each and every transaction fraudently made.

This should please the State Legislature as it Protects Business!!!

</sarcasm>

Awesome!

[Sneftel]

Heck, this sounds like great news. After all, unlike many a failed new media content venture, Microsoft isn't going out of business and leaving their customers high and dry... just retiring this particular service. So they have plenty of time to come up with a migration plan for their customers, so that nobody who paid for music has to lose access to it. I mean, hell. They're a multinational corporation with an image to protect. They're not just going to tell their customers to go fuck themselves, right?

Right?

Re:Awesome!

[Tavor]

Only on Slashdot could the bleeding sarcasm in parent comment be modded "Insightful" or "Interesting".

Re:Awesome!

[HairyCanary]

On the bright side, that means there is hope for your comment, too.

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck yourself

*throws a chair*

- Steve Ballmer

Re:Awesome!

[Dunbal]

Only on Slashdot could the bleeding sarcasm in parent comment be modded "Insightful" or "Interesting".

      Yes, but you should know by now that that's because Funny mods don't give karma, whereas Insightful or Interesting does. So we cheat, because some sarcastic bastards deserve some karma once in a while.

      Still.... *throws chair* is better than "take a seat over there"...

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

At least give the parent the benefit of the mod points by modding insightful. This is actually what is happening. If Microsoft went out of business, then, yes, I would they can't fulfill their end of the bargain, and customers are unintentionally fucked. Microsoft is not going out of business, they are choosing to abandon these customers.

When you buy a MS operating system, you are well aware you that you are paying for the license to use it. Through changes in computer technology, it is well understood that within a few years, said operating system will be outdated and obsolete.

When I buy music on CD, I don't sign any license agreement. And I fully expect the CD's I purchased to work on any CD player I put them in. 5 years later, 10 years later, hell, until the medium has degraded from age, I don't expect those circumstances to change. These are the expectations within this market, so why should downloaded music - the exact same stuff I can buy on a little plastic disc - be any different?

Oh, wait, nevermind. Forget what I just said. This is actually good news. It shows DRM for what it is, and it shows the record companies they need to change their business model. After all, didn't we already show them how they can distribute the same music at a much lower cost. And you don't need a giant warehouse to store all the stuff you don't need to ship anymore, either. Which means you also don't need to pay those outrageous salaries to union employees anymore. Shit, if we keep cutting costs, before you know it, music will be free.

The thing I can't figure out is: Why would they expect me to pay $1 per song for a shit-quality mp3, riddled with DRM? If I buy an albums' worth of songs (10-15 songs), it's going to cost me the same $10-$15 it would cost me to buy higher quality files on a little plastic disc, that I can rip to my hard drive, to be played on my device of choice?

Anyway, at least mod the parent insightful.

Glad I never got into this stupidity

[kcredden]

This is just the reason why I never bought any music online. Unless it's MP3 or can be converted to MP3 I won't fool with it. Apple's Itunes is marginally tolerable, only because you can convert them to MP3 by re-ripping a burt CD. But if I do that, why should I buy them in the first place? I'll just buy a used CD and rip it. Sad people are getting screwed, but maybe they'll think before buying next time. Yeah, and maybe horses will fly too. - Kc

Re:Glad I never got into this stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's iTunes is marginally tolerable, only because you can convert them to MP3 by re-ripping a burt CD.

In that case, then Microsoft's MSN store is also "marginally tolerable" because the same thing applies to it.

It also applies to Sony's CONNECT store which shut down earlier this year.

This is not a feature of iTunes; it is a characteristic of any music DRM that does not prohibit burning of audio CDs. As others have pointed out, it's lossy; but it exists.

The only way in which iTunes is "better" than MSN Music or CONNECT in this regard is that iTunes has not shut down yet. Nothing is forever, and eventually iTunes will meet its demise. At that point, all the iTunes DRM-protected music will suffer the same fate. Don't think for one moment that Apple would do any differently.

It would be a different matter if there were to be legislation which requires that any DRM system remove the DRM lock (and thus free the music) when the DRM provider shuts down. The chance of such legislation happening is about the same as the French repaying the war debt.

Re:Glad I never got into this stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason you buy from iTunes is because they let you buy one track at a time. The Good Tracks, not the Filler Tracks.

Me, I use Jamendo and magnatune, so what do I know?

Re:Glad I never got into this stupidity

[Farmer Tim]

I'll just buy a used CD and rip it.

Works fo-fo-fo-fo-fo-fo-fo-fo-fo-fo-for me.

Where are the lawyers?

[chaz373]

Anyone want to take bets on when the 1st class action lawsuit will be filed due to this? I'll take April 30th 2008.

Re:Where are the lawyers?

[v1]

The knee-jerk reaction to this is "oh MS will just release an app to strip the DRM from your music". BUT... you know they have signed agreements from where they got the music, saying they can't DO that.

So, it should get much more interesting, because the only thing that can get them out of the pot is leaping into the fire.

Serves them right.

Re:Where are the lawyers?

[compro01]

BUT... you know they have signed agreements from where they got the music, saying they can't DO that. i wonder, can the courts render those (parts of those) agreements void and force microsoft to strip the drm?

ONLY GOOD THINGS COME OUT OF IT!!!

[eiapoce]

I am utterly pleased with MS decision to shut down the DRM servers.

Know why? There are people that don't realise how bad are DRM downloads until they get royally fucked in the ass and this is what's going to happen on sept 1 2008.

Nothing educates more than a bad experience.

Re:ONLY GOOD THINGS COME OUT OF IT!!!

[Mateito]

I'm sorry, you seem to be suggesting that being royally fucked in the ass is a bad thing.

Re:ONLY GOOD THINGS COME OUT OF IT!!!

[passiveNecro]

I am utterly pleased with MS decision to shut down the DRM servers. Know why? There are people that don't realise how bad are DRM downloads until they get royally fucked in the ass and this is what's going to happen on sept 1 2008. Nothing educates more than a bad experience. wouldn't someone have to have actually used the service to learn the lesson though. If it had been successful they wouldn't be shutting it down. Are enough people going to be effected by this to mean anything?

Re:ONLY GOOD THINGS COME OUT OF IT!!!

[enoz]

Actually since this is America we are talking about:

Nothing litigates more than a bad experience. Educates? Pfft, yeah right.

Re:ONLY GOOD THINGS COME OUT OF IT!!!

[onefriedrice]

Unfortunately, this isn't likely to change anything. Worse yet, it will serve to keep people tied to their Windows operating systems. It's almost as if that's what MS had in mind all along...

Re:ONLY GOOD THINGS COME OUT OF IT!!!

[Darundal]

Only if you don't consent, which I believe to be the case here for most of the people who bought music from the MSN music store.

Re:ONLY GOOD THINGS COME OUT OF IT!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

So i take it Microsoft PR is being shifted to San Fran?

Re:ONLY GOOD THINGS COME OUT OF IT!!!

[harlows_monkeys]

Know why? There are people that don't realise how bad are DRM downloads until they get royally fucked in the ass and this is what's going to happen on sept 1 2008

When Google did the same thing in August 2007 with video, it didn't seem to have all that much effect. Why will this be different?

Re:ONLY GOOD THINGS COME OUT OF IT!!!

[gad_zuki!]

> this is what's going to happen on sept 1 2008.

Sept 1st 2008. Never forget.

Re:ONLY GOOD THINGS COME OUT OF IT!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

SURPRISE BUTTSECKS

Re:ONLY GOOD THINGS COME OUT OF IT!!!

[digitrev]

Because they offered store credit, and upon hearing the customer revolt, offered a full refund.

Re:ONLY GOOD THINGS COME OUT OF IT!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear hear!

Let the Average Joe get screwed and only then will the music and movie industries have to change their ways.

You don't think there is a single /.er who buys DRM crippled content do you? We get our music and and video when, where and how we want, ffs!

In fact take this a step further and don't enable anyone but your dearest in navigating the DRM minefield since this can only speed the change.

Gee it sucks to be on the front edge of the curve but ultimately this is the only way these things happen.

Are we all hoarse? ;)

Re:ONLY GOOD THINGS COME OUT OF IT!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately a lot of those users are not very technically knowledgeable and may not realise what has taken place, or may even think that they did something wrong that "screwed up" their music.

On the other hand, I feel fairly confident that they will not get away with this as easily as they think. Remember the Google Video Store? Google came straight out with refunds in the form of Google Checkout credit, there was uproar, and they ended up giving credit card refunds in addition to the initial Google Checkout credit.

If Microsoft think they're going to be able to just turn off the servers and walk away, they've got another thing coming. These tracks were sold under a set of conditions that they are no longer willing to honour. Most countries have laws that say they must now give refunds to their customers.

In the immortal words of Nelson:

[Socguy]

HA HA!

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:Haven't you heard?

[peragrin]

flash drives aren't meant to be written to regularly. using a flash drive as swap space means that your million writes will get hit very fast.

What worries me are the SSD drives running windows. Since they must have swap space to function promptly. Linux can disable swap. I am not sure if OS X can even do that, but I haven't yet tried either.

Re:Haven't you heard?

[molarmass192]

You used to be able to disable swap in OS X via the /etc/rc file up until Leopard. Leopard changed things and now you essentially have to hack the dynamic_pager daemon to do the same thing. It's not impossible, but it's non-standard and def not for the average Mac user.

Re:Haven't you heard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although it's true that flash drives have a maximum limit the firmware on the drives distributes writes around the media and typically you'll get 50+ years of use out of flash media.

These are just numbered based on my shoddy memory, so please if someone has some statistics to correct me I'd appreciate it :)

Re:Haven't you heard?

[Anonymous Coward]

What worries me are the SSD drives running windows. Since they must have swap space to function promptly. Linux can disable swap. I am not sure if OS X can even do that, but I haven't yet tried either. Another advantage with Linux is that it's more memory efficient. For example, my desktop has 1.5gb/ram. Even after running it for a weekend, running dozens of Firefox windows with dozens of tabs, running Evolution, vlc, dozens of gnome-terminals, etc, it still only uses up around 800mb of ram. The only times I hit swap is when I run two instantaces of WinXP under VMWare.

Not quite

[symbolset]

I believe the term "Plays For Now(tm)" is more appropriate. Goes for all DRM content too.

Re:Not quite

[seandiggity]

"PlaysForNowUnderCertainConditionsOnCertainDevicesIfYouPaidForIt"

Re:Not quite

[syousef]

More like "Plays For Some For Now (*maybe, but we won't guarantee it)".

You might as well be paying a couple of bucks per track to listen to the radio.

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:I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, a lesson as in what IDIOT buys anything from Microsoft????

SUCKERS!

Re:I don't get it...

[AdamKG]

More likely, they're upgrading their server environment and don't want to spend the time updating the application's codebase. (You know, legacy codebases. Ugh.)

Re:I don't get it...

[mithras invictus]

it means these customers will be anxious to upgrade before the deadline which result in some more vista "sales"

Re:I don't get it...

[aztektum]

I have a feeling it's more about getting people that don't know any better to switch over to a new platform than how much it costs them to run that "old" one.

Re:I don't get it...

[CheeseTroll]

Don't forget to factor in the cost of upgrading the servers' OS. Those CALs can really add up!

Re:I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's a very interesting point. You couldn't imagine any other company in the world doing this (the bad will, blah blah). Keeping a DRM key server running, would be pennies. ...even if they hundreds of millions of customers (and then you'd wonder why they're shutting down this service).

Although, I hate to come up with elaborite reason from
So, is it they're trying to show that DRM sucks? Or just gross incompetence?

Re:I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Normally it wouldn't cost much to keep the servers running, but these servers need to be upgraded to Vista due to Microsoft internal policy and the increased hardware requirements and running costs of the new hardware would bankrupt Microsoft if they kept the servers online.

Re:I don't get it...

[mxs]

It's almost as if they *want* this to be a lesson to somebody...nah, couldn't be... Yeah, the lesson is "don't have any dealings with Microsoft, they will make you bend over and take it hard". Sadly, that lesson has been taught many times before and there are still suckers falling for their crap.

Re:I don't get it...

[jackbird]

You couldn't imagine any other company in the world doing this

How about Major League Baseball?

Re:I don't get it...

[jruschme]

Is this really an issue of running servers or of licensing to the record labels? I'm thinking that it may be that a bunch of contracts are about to expire and it would be prohibitive to renegotiate/renew them without the now-defunct music store.

Re:I don't get it...

[jafac]

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

If I had just shipped a DRM-supporting OS that was the worst unmitigated disaster since Windows ME, I think I'd want to be teaching folks a lesson about the evils of DRM too.

Only the Content Cartels and their lawyers want DRM.

Companies who make devices, (including software) for the playback of content, really don't have anything to gain by selling crippled devices.

Maybe I'm just fantasising here, but if MS *has* seen the light on DRM, it would give them a chance to make the next version of Windows, um. . . usable and worthwhile. Unlike Vista.

Yep,

[roc97007]

The used CD market is looking a lot more attractive now, innit?

Re:Yep,

[Dunbal]

The used CD market is looking a lot more attractive now, innit?

      Yep, I download my used CD's every day. Well, SOMEONE used them.

PlaysForSure

[daveime]

Isn't this classed as deceptive advertising ?

PlaysForAsLongAsWeTellYouItPlaysNowFuckOff would have been more appropriate.

Not that big of an impact

[Anonymous Coward]

I talked to my rep, & he said that this only affects the 5 people who actually bought music from MSN Music, & only equals 40 or 50 songs... mostly Mel Torme albums.

I felt...

[actionbastard]

a great disturbance on the Internet, as if millions of Plays For Sure musicplayers suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

Re:I felt...

[compro01]

millions?

Re:I felt...

[dlanod]

Millions? Even the article disagrees with that - "...the five different computers that PlaysForSure...".

Re:I felt...

[ArAgost]

a great disturbance on the Internet, as if tens of Plays For Sure musicplayers suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. There, fixed that for you.

Re:I felt...

[tokul]

millions of Plays For Sure musicplayers

Don't exaggerate. five is two hundred thousand times less than one million.

Re:I felt...

[slimey_limey]

Yes, all six of them.

Perfect Example why DRM sucks... HOWEVER.

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

While this is a perfect example of why DRM sucks, its also a perfect example of how media distributors can force a user to buy their music & movies multiple times. All they need do, is terminate one of their companies, and start a new one requiring a different DRM key or scheme.

Like it or not, companies love this because by licensing you products, they can terminate the license at anytime and force you to buy it again. :)

DRM sucks.

Re:Perfect Example why DRM sucks... HOWEVER.

[mgroat]

Major League Baseball already did that in 2007.

MLB shut down the DRM server because they've changed suppliers, and now they expect suckers to buy downloads of games in the new DRM format. http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/07/mlb-rips-off-fans-wh.html

Re:Perfect Example why DRM sucks... HOWEVER.

[TheGratefulNet]

Like it or not, companies love this because by licensing you products, they can terminate the license at anytime and force you to buy it again.

its this thinking and behavior (on the media makers) that CREATE the hatred in the youth today (and even my middle-age group of consumers).

when you feel you've been continuously cheated, you start to NOT CARE about rights of those that have been cheating you.

I'm old enough to have bought the 'abbey road' album several times; cassette, LP, CD. and while its not fully logical to suppress paying for B since I multiply paid for A, its still how people FEEL and act. it just is. when people feel cheated they take things upon themselves to find justice, any way they can.

I stopped buying new media, even non-DRM cds. I might buy used cd's but happily none of that money goes back to 'the system' so that's a good thing, the way I see it. I don't want ANY of my money to help fund the madness that the media companies are a part of.

you say that the media makers can get us to buy and re-buy; but I don't think so anymore. people are hip to that and aren't going to fall for it anymore.

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:Is MS marketing really that stupid?

[John Meacham]

I am guessing it has to do with some contract they had with the RIAA that lapsed and they are not going to renew rather than any server cost. They could have been suckered into a bad deal thinking their service was gonna be the bomb and they would have enough new sales to make up their ongoing fees to the RIAA. This is just speculation though.

Re:Is MS marketing really that stupid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, after all this bad PR everyone will get super pissed at Microsoft and move from Windows to GNU/Linux... *cough*

They don't seem to bothered by the bad PR the Euro anti-trust case sent their way, maybe they're just resigned to being the company everyone loves to hate.

Re:Is MS marketing really that stupid?

[IchBinEinPenguin]

This is a PR fiasco for their DRM technology

No it isn't.

News/Media companies are going to be very quiet on this.

A cookie for you if you can figure out why :-)

Re:Is MS marketing really that stupid?

[Anonymous Coward]

They obviously attended the Sony Rootkit School of Goodwill.....

...but this could never happen....

[roc97007]

...to DRM controlled video content, right? Oh wait...

Slashdot does extend outside of the US, you know

[Rix]

In the free world, "defying" the RIAA is perfectly legal.

allofmp3

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Aren't they dead and buried now? They're pretty well fucked, but all the music they ever sold still works fine.

Go with the honest ones. You can tell who they are. When they are taken down, they won't take you down with them.

New tag?

[martinw89]

"FailsForSure"

Own Follow up: Is MS marketing really that stupid?

[Lieutenant_Dan]

Sorry, meant to say that they should stop issuing any media using the old type of DRM so that they add to their baggage. I guess they have to re-issue existing keys if people move the media to a different system which they might.

Bad analogy

[Dogun]

The main point is your analogy is not apt. A use case of a car does not approximate the use case of a DRM licensed song.

And, someone has already responded to the point - with cars, somebody else can still build the parts if your car were to stop working. Except now, your car won't start for 'new drivers'. (And that's where the crap analogy breaks down).

Now we see who has the rights...

[JoeCommodore]

and who has the restrictions.

Though this was not the beginning, Music Match was one that happened first.

Downloaded a few MP3s last evening, no worries here.

Are certain about this?

[stavrica]

Is it ForSure?(tm)

You Fa1l It?!

[Anonymous Coward]

NetBSD posts on to avoid so as to are there? Oh, *BSD but FreeBSD it. Its mission is Usenet. In 1195, it racist for a can be like balance is struck, then disappeared

Re:You Fa1l It?!

[shentino]

You really should get that looked at by a doctor...

Just deserts.

[DaedalusHKX]

I agree with you. I actually will not take anything NOT in Mpeg or Ogg format. Preferably Ogg, but either format will suffice. No, I don't like WMV, WMA, or any of the other big formats (even though .mov is fairly nice) mostly because I have to consistently run someone's proprietary player. Not that I have a problem with that. But if I can't install it with .configure && make install... I don't do it.

Hell, been a BSD user for years, and a Linux user for almost as long. Been a windows user for a little longer than I've been a Linux user, and i must say... of all three drugs, Windows left me pretty deflated... until I learned that I could work on and get Quake II, III and IV running in Linux, side by side with Doom 3 :)

I'm still jumpy in dark rooms ever since then. I never understood why they had all the other guns in Doom3, shotgun was enough for all but the last few battles in Hell, and the ammo, even in nightmare mode was guaranteed to rarely run out if you could actually HIT what you aimed at.

What I can't figure out is WHY they don't have some NICE 30 caliber rifles in those games. Always fancy super fast needle guns, AHEM, "assault rifles" but never anything with good penetration and punch. Halflife2... 3mm SMG?? No wonder nobody dies from being shot with those pea shooters in that game.

Oops, got off track. EOF.

Re:Just deserts.

[Malevolyn]

But if I can't install it with .configure && make install... I don't do it. Don't XMMS and mplayer have plugins to play Windows Media files? Not DRM'd ones, of course.

Re:Just deserts.

[DaedalusHKX]

They're a wee bit sluggish in 32 bit (running on a 4 ghz rig, dual cpu), as far as I can tell. They're downright choppy in 64 bit (dual core amd in this case 2 ghz).

I'm not much of a fan since regular Mpegs and Oggs and .VOB play FAR better with no lag even on my old (often mothballed) 400 mhz celeron jukebox.

Even Matroska .mkv files play perfectly. Standard microsoft AVI's and WMV's are shit, though. And I'd rather donate 500 bucks to the Gentoo foundation rather than pay Microsoft for their sub par offering, just to get their videos working well.

Plays For Sure...

[DieByWire]

Just not for long.

What Can I Say?

[His Shadow]

This is the funniest thing I've read all year.

MS First Record Store to Go Down?

[SimonHova]

Surely Microsoft isn't the first record store to go dark. The largest perhaps. Is there a Wikilist with the record stores that have gone down this far?

Why? Is Microsoft starved for cash or something?

[superdude72]

Maybe they should have called it PlaysForNow?

What a stupid move. How much would it cost to keep the servers running vs. damaging their brand this way.

utah

[Arashtamere]

OH GEEZ, and they wonder why people continue to pirate music!!!!! SCREW DRM, PIRATE AWAY, STEAL IT ALL I SAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Record and music companies can kiss my thieving, pirating white butt!!!!!!!!

Re:utah

[Malevolyn]

Trent Reznor? Is that you?

MS confirms it

[Anonymous Coward]

there are only five users of DRMed music.

That was my initial impression at least (same as 'Every 20 minutes a man is held up' -- Who is that unlucky bastard?)

VISTA = New Auth

[Piranhaa]

I wonder if Microsoft is going to release an 'update' to Vista which turns YOUR PC into a DRM authentication server. They just don't want anyone knowing about it... yet

Re:Is there any chance?

[Technician]

Is there any chance they will do the right thing and provide a conversion utility to convert the DRM songs into non-DRM songs so the purchaser doesn't have the songs stolen back from them. If not, I smell a lawsuit..

Unlock the DRM

[CheshireDragon]

I have not seen this through the thread posts yet, BUT couldn't M$ go ahead and start unlocking all that music? Simply have a small prog that you can run on the comp that checks the customer's acct and music files to verify that they paid for it all and then unlock the music? I am not a programmer and don't really know how DRM functions, but I see this as a feesable solution.

Re:Unlock the DRM

[oracle128]

They could easily do that. But it's not that simple. Maybe if MS owned the copyright to the music they're selling, they would. But they don't, as MS themselves licence it from the record companies.
After all, that's the whole reason the DRM is on there in the first place. Do you really think MS would choose to waste resources designing, implmenting and supporting a DRM service? Of course not, they do that specifically to make it attractive to the record companies to get MS to sell their music. They enter a contract which basically says "we grant MS the ability to sell our music, provided it is secured with DRM".

That's why MS have DRM and that's why they can't just take it off even if they wanted to (which they probably do). They would need the blessing of the copyright owners to do so, for every individual track.

Re:Unlock the DRM

[anubi]

Well, if the "RIAA" can sue, what is it?, $180.000 or so, as damages for each song downloaded but not paid for...

We should be also able to sue RIAA the same damages for each song paid for but unplayable. And collect!

After all, our "Pledge of Allegiance" starts off with "I Pledge Allegiance" and ends with "Justice For ALL".

Any judge failing to comprehend this contract should have their employment reviewed.

Piracy

[aliquis]

Everything are so much easier as a pirate. You even got your backup online, so to speak.

Quick, where's the "itoldyouso" tag?

[uep]

Isn't this the fear that we've had all along about DRM content?

Class action lawsuit?

[JustNiz]

Isn't this another class action lawsuit against Microsoft just waiting to happen?

I mean apart from anything else, how fucking difficult could it be for Microsoft to keep a license server running anyway?

Unlikely.

[ZPWeeks]

Unfortunately just about anyone "legally purchasing" music has signed a license agreement with the service. Since they are legally purchasing a license to use the sound recording for personal use - a rather restrictive license, at that - they really got what was coming to them.

I doubt that the courts would be an effective place to take this up. The market has already started to push producers towards offering their music through DRM-free avenues. (iTunes Plus, Amazon MP3, eMusic, Magnatune)

If enough users get screwed like this with closing DRMed stores, DRM will come crashing down.

(side note: I'm in a band that chose to only make its music available through DRM-free stores. We don't like letting retailers screw our fans. Check it out.

Re:Unlikely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet, I'll try to find the torrent and give you all a listen.

Re:Unlikely.

[aweraw]

I was under the impression that eMusic had always sold DRM free tracks... am I mistaken? I've made a decent number of purchases through them for that express reason - No DRM, plain jane MP3's.

I'd be a little more than disappointed to learn that I've been wrong all this time.

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:Unlikely.

[Internet Ronin]

I am not a lawyer, and the only legal advice contained in this post is to consult your own lawyer in a professional setting, but I think a suit like this would have legs.

Especially in a state that was heavily pro-plaintiff (normally I'd say California, but Texas might be a better forum given the subject matter), there's a good chance that any clause in the licensing agreement (contract) could be struck as unconscionable. The common law test for unconscionability is whether or not a signor would have signed the contract if they had known about the unconscionable clause.

I imagine there are a great many people, including judges, who would find a clause where people could simply have their music turned off as unconscionable. I realize that America is perceived as overly litigious, but this sort of injury redressability is exactly what the civil court system is for. The rise of the Standard Form Contract essentially means that consumers seeking a purchase have little or no bargaining power (go ahead and try and negotiate with your cell phone carrier about it's terms), and modern formulations of the law (like the Uniform Commercial Code) are designed to deal with these realities.

Sue 'em. Sue the shit out of 'em. It's what it's there for. Lawsuits hit MS a lot harder than 'boycotts' do. You need thousands of successful participants in a boycott, you only need one in a lawsuit.

Re:Unlikely.

[ultranova]

Sue 'em. Sue the shit out of 'em. It's what it's there for. Lawsuits hit MS a lot harder than 'boycotts' do. You need thousands of successful participants in a boycott, you only need one in a lawsuit.

But you need thousands upon thousands of dollars to sue. Who can afford to lose that much ?

Microsoft will get away with this, no matter what the law says, because the cost of getting justice is simply much too high. But at least the people who got burned with this now know better than to buy music, which helps the cause of the pirate party, even if just a little bit.

Re:Unlikely.

[Brett Johnson]

But you need thousands upon thousands of dollars to sue. Who can afford to lose that much ?

I suspect that a vast majority of "Plays-for-sure" consumers purchased less than USD$5000 worth of music. This would qualify them to file in Small Claims Court, which requires tens, not thousands, of dollars. Microsoft would likely find that 100,000 small claims suits is much more painful than a handful of class-action suits.

Re:Unlikely.

[clang_jangle]

I was a plaintiff in a "successful" class action suit against a major telco. This is a company which continued to bill me for service every month for six months after I cancelled my subscription, after having overcharged me regularly and "slammed" me into services I did not order or authorize while I was legitimately subscribed. We were awarded an impressive amount of money after a two-year battle. Finally after the lawyers got paid and we all split the money I received the princely sum of $7.00 (yes, seven dollars U.S.). They are still pursuing collection against me for the months they were billing me after I had unsubscribed via a collection agency. I absolutely will not pay those bastards one more red cent as long as I live, so in four years that one goes away. That suit was "won" three years ago.

Re:Unlikely.

[greedyturtle]

I recieved $13 from the CD price fixing class action suit. I found out about it from Slashdot no less.

Perhaps some enterprising Microsoft purchaser will get a website set up to start collecting names. I also wonder if a class action could force Microsoft to (securely) give up it's Plays For Shure customer list.

Re:Unlikely.

[redxxx]

This. DDoS Microsoft's legal department.

Has it ever been done before? I mean, just put together a wiki with templates available, and let folks fill them in with information required for each jurisdiction. It's not like they can file for restraining orders or anything to prevent it, because it is done by unassociated individuals.

They have a obligation to reply within a certain period of time, and there isn't much of a way they could actually do it. Massive numbers of jurisdictions and individual courts to deal with. I don't see how they could manage it, if they were all filed within a short period...

This seems like it would be a really effective method of dealing with companies that dick over their consumers.

Re:Unlikely.

[poot_rootbeer]

Since they are legally purchasing a license to use the sound recording for personal use - a rather restrictive license, at that - they really got what was coming to them.

What they had purchased was a license to use the sound recording for personal use FOR AN UNSPECIFIED LENGTH OF TIME. MSN Music's has no authority to make a unilateral decision to change the terms of that license.

Customers affected by this change are entitled to have their purchases refunded, or replaced with alternates of equal value and capability.

Re:Unlikely.

[Reziac]

My brain hurts ... would this also apply to software that requires online activation?? that is, would the vendor be required to maintain the activation servers for 35 years?

Interesting to me, because you know damn well they DON'T intend to do any such thing.

Re:Unlikely.

[dgatwood]

If it is licensed, not sold, then yes, that's the way I would interpret copyright law.

To make a long story short, these companies like to pick and choose what portions of copyright law apply to their users, hoping that they won't notice. They try to get software sales treated as a sale when it is convenient for them, treated as a license when it is convenient for them. That seems unreasonable to me, and I suspect the courts would agree if it ever got that far.

The thing is, though, that such a case probably wouldn't make it to court, as authors of software expensive enough to make it worth hiring a lawyer (as opposed to small claims which would just end up in collections for the price of the software and you probably would never recover a penny of the money) generally don't use activation, as they generally know all three of their potential customers.... The companies that use activation generally have most of their users upgrade to a newer version, so the number of people still using the software decreases pretty rapidly, and by the time the activation servers shut down, not enough people care to be a problem. The company settles out of court for a $100 discount on an upgraded purchase, and the EULAs never get tested in court.

The difference with music is that people don't upgrade it and stop using the old one.

Re:Unlikely.

[harrkev]

Keep one thing in mind. The music is NOT being turned off. The people who purchased the music can still listen to it forever, and it can be handed down to their children as an inheritance.

Granted, they have to keep the original computer around for decades, and can't update the operating system. They had also better hope that the hard drive doesn't die. But, technically, Microsoft is not turning any music off.

Sucks, but sounds like a great loophole for Microsoft to use in court to me.

Re:Unlikely.

[Reziac]

I think you're right... for anything below a Fortune 100 contract, they run the numbers re whether there's a likelihood that the purchaser will argue about it, vs. the probable lifespan of the product, conclude "sucks to be you" and do as they please, whether that's legal or not :(

However, isn't there something in law that prohibits the seller *intentionally* breaking faith with the customer? Occurs to me that's an avenue to pursue, and through the criminal courts, not the lawyer-profiting civil courts.

Re:Unlikely.

[jafac]

Well, in reality, there is no such thing as "perpetual ownership" of ANYTHING for human beings. Humans die.

Corporations can "own" things in perpetuity.

Hell, in most countries, you can't even really BUY land. For example, in the UK, you lease it from the queen for 99 years. That's the best you can expect.

And in the US, you can't really BUY land either. Because you have to pay taxes on property, and eventually, you have to pay up more than what you paid for the property, and the IRS will just take it if you don't.

So, I don't get where this idea of "perpetual property" comes from. I can understand WANTING to own something forever. But unless you're either a supernatural being, or a Corporation, there is no "forever".

Rejection of the reality of our temporary existance is what allows owners to charge $$$ for the ILLUSION of perpetual ownership of something.

When you take that into consideration; yes - a physical CD is a much better deal, because you "OWN" it for as long as the physical media lasts, or you die, whichever comes first. (and if you die first, your heirs can have it).

Next: we need to embrace the reality that paying about $1 for a real-physical-media song, is a much better deal than paying about $1 for a DRM-ed digital copy.

Once we are able to look at this objectively, it really starts to appear as if a DRM-ed song is really only worth about a nickel or so.

When Apple first came out with iTMS - I said that 99 cents was WAY TOO MUCH for a DRM-ed file. The market disagreed, and made iTMS the #1 retailer in the country. I posit, that The Market is STUPID.

(take that, you dumb-ass Invisible Hand.)

Re:Unlikely.

[alan_dershowitz]

The music was never warranteed to be playable forever, but you will find that as part of every DRM music purchase agreement there is an explicit statement that to be playable the music must be authenticated against a service. There is no explicit or implied statement that such authentication methods would be in place forever. This is the part where the buyer should have said "I'm not buying this crap" and walked away. Caveat Emptor. There is no theft of property nor is there a breach of license for either party. The arguments do not even apply.

Years ago I bought a Braun shaver. Only Braun-brand shaving replacement blades work in the thing. That was 20 years ago, the model is retired and they don't make that model of replacement blade anymore. Does this represent theft of property on Braun's part because I can't use a 20-year-old razor? The answer is that if you can only go to one source to effectively use a product, you as a consumer need to be smart enough to understand that that relationship will only last as long as it's viable for the company to keep doing that. There is no implied warranty in the statement "shaves great" any more than "plays for sure." The product had a shelf-life.

Exactly!

[goombah99]

parent says my thoughts exactly, I'd mod up if I had thepoints.

The same argument applies to the plays-for-sure players. Those were sold on two arguments

1) it plays for sure. You are not beholden to apple or a single player maker. You can move it around on your computers. But it turns out you were beholden to one company afterall. The name alone ought to be enough to be false advertising on the players.

2) the players promised you you could buy music to play on the "plays for sure".

the player makers owe you your music as much as the music retailers.

aww

[byronsting]

some cool A laggest store to download mp3 music http://justmusicstore.com/ http://www.lavamus.com/

2014 isn't that far away

[Cassini2]

I have a machine in service with an embedded computer in it. The software for programming the computer does not support subdirectories. It dates from MS-DOS 1.1 from 25 years ago. It sort of works with MS-DOS 3.2 from 22 years ago.

Windows XP will still be in use after 2014. Not every piece of technology is easy to update.

Re:2014 isn't that far away

[colmore]

I promise you that if you know how to debug and update COBOL software on 1970 era mainframes, there is work out there for you.

Re:2014 isn't that far away

[Anonymous Coward]

ha ha.

please tell us about this "embedded computer" from 1983.

seriously, I am curious.

Re:2014 isn't that far away

[AHuxley]

"embedded computer" from 1983 sounds like a real advance vs punch cards
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.03/punchcards.html

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. ;-)

Re:2014 isn't that far away

[PopeRatzo]

I had to dig out my Pentium 100Mhz and sell it to my boss How much did you get for it? C'mon, spill!

I hope you gave it a little markup, since it's considered a "classic". You should have at least charged him approximately what you paid for it.

Re:2014 isn't that far away

[Corporate Troll]

Same here... Except it wasn't my boss but my father in law. Exactly the same situation: an old PC controlled a lathe in his company and it broke down. I gave him an old P166 with ISA slots that I had lying around.

The company who made the lathe was out of business. Could be the same... Was it called "MASTEN" or something like that?

Re:2014 isn't that far away

[Andy Dodd]

That sounds like a task for some reverse engineering and an Arduino...

Re:2014 isn't that far away

[Alex Belits]

What is so funny about that? There are plenty of industrial control systems including CNC machine tools, buildings automation, city/utilities control systems, safety equipment, cash registers, etc. that have computers from that time. Even embedded systems produced now are all over the place -- from PIC to x86 Linux.

Re:2014 isn't that far away

[Nakarti]

Hey, you may also have found a real use for DOSbox under Linux. It even has the performance of a 20Mhz CPU on fairly modern PCs(~1GHz, fastest I've seen with ISA)

Re:2014 isn't that far away

[hairyfeet]

I'll be damned. Small world,huh? Yeah it was called Masten or something like that. The lathe really does nice work and I can't really blame the guy for not wanting to replace it as the DOS program that controls it is dead simple, which means less than ten minutes training to get a new guy up and running on it. And it really is a tough old piece of hardware. It'll probably outlast my old Pentium 100Mhz.

Oh, and for the guy that wanted me to "spill" about how much I got for it, I sold him that one plus a Pentium 266Mhz and set them both up with DOS 3 for $200. Which i think is a pretty good deal considering that between the two he'll probably get another 20+ years out of that lathe,LOL! I set it up so he has the spare in a really clean spot in a nice temperature controlled part of the office back room and told him and his son to be sure to boot it up at least once a month to keep the hard drive from locking up. I also gave his son a disk image of the OS with the lathe program installed so if the hard drive dies it won't take anything to get her going again.

The amazing thing was the 20Mhz was still running! The PSU had finally starting to get flaky and would cut out intermittently and of course since it was from the bad old days of proprietary everything we didn't have a PSU that would fit. The guy was just so happy to have it back we probably could have charged triple and he wouldn't have complained,LOL! The other shops he went to told him it would be AT LEAST a couple of weeks until they could buy an old box online or track one down and he had a customer waiting on some custom columns for his new house, so he was about to lose a nice bit of cash. I worked on the boxes during the night and had him set up before noon the next day. Man, i can't believe there would be someone else here that actually worked on one of those old ISA lathes. What are the odds,huh?

Re:2014 isn't that far away

[Shakrai]

Oh, and for the guy that wanted me to "spill" about how much I got for it, I sold him that one plus a Pentium 266Mhz and set them both up with DOS 3 for $200.

The guy was just so happy to have it back we probably could have charged triple and he wouldn't have complained,

You should have charged him triple. Seriously. I do quite a bit of consulting outside of my day job (isn't it great being an IT person? Everything from PCs to vending machines are somehow our specialty) and I often made the mistake of undercharging for my work.

For everything that you did for that guy and for saving him tens of thousands of dollars? You probably got paid under the table? Next time ask for $595 -- $5 less then the 1099 reporting requirement. You get $600 tax free and they get a working system with no headaches for a fraction of the cost of going elsewhere.

Re:2014 isn't that far away

[Corporate Troll]

I didn't ask my father in law anything for it. After all, I already have his daughter.... Hehehe. Anyway, the machine attached to his lathe was even less than 20MHz. It was one of the few IBM PS/2s that came with an ISA bus instead of an MCA bus and featured a 8086 chip (if I remember correctly)

Just in case you ever have to deal with it again: I installed FreeDOS on the machine I gave him because I couldn't find my DOS 3.3 disks anywhere. FreeDOS works perfectly fine with the lathe. I also added in an ISA ethernet card and installed Damn Small Linux on it for dual-boot. That way he could easily backup the DOS partition to his network. It has to be seen if he ever uses that feature though.

Man, i can't believe there would be someone else here that actually worked on one of those old ISA lathes. What are the odds,huh?

We're on slashdot.... The odds are quite good here for meeting people having been in "quite special" situations ;-)

Re:2014 isn't that far away

[UncleTogie]

We're on slashdot.... The odds are quite good here for meeting people having been in "quite special" situations ;-)

Quite special? Guess that explains why I rode the little bus!

I'll have to throw out a "ditto" on the old-PC interface. We recently had a guy come in with a 286. Turns out he'd bought an engraving machine in the late 80's and had forgotten how to use it. My favorite part: He left the engraver at home and wanted us to show him how to use the software HERE.

Lacking a CGA monitor and engraver, we made a call to his house. ;)

...and people wonder why I ask new hires about DOS/CLI experience...

Re:2014 isn't that far away

[BoomerSooner]

Lol, just remember that if you get divorced :)

Re:2014 isn't that far away

[Chmcginn]

Next time ask for $595 -- $5 less then the 1099 reporting requirement. You get $600 tax free and they get a working system with no headaches for a fraction of the cost of going elsewhere.

Just because they don't have to file a 1099 doesn't mean you're not supposed to pay tax on it. If you get audited, having a large number of $595 dollar deposits may look pretty suspicious. That's effectively what Al Capone was imprisoned for, remember...

Re:2014 isn't that far away

[hairyfeet]

Well, to be fair the boss made a couple of hundred for sending me out on a tech service call. Plus I have found when working with those little Mom&Pop shops like this one a little good will and a fair deal can make you a HEFTY profit. We must of worked on over 200 machines that all ended up coming from that one job. First the owner and his son started telling their family how fair we were and how quickly they were back in business, plus they brought their wifes and kids machines in to be cleaned of the usual Kazaa spyware at a nice $75 a pop. Then the kids told all THEIR friends, the wives told all their girlfriends and kinfolks,etc.

For six months afterwards we would get calls like this- "Hey, are you the guys that did all that work for Karen's husbands lumber business? You are? Listen, my kid got on my laptop and now I have pop-ups going all over the place. Do you think you'd have time to look at it?" So a little good will and a fair deal goes a long way. Plus I still had all the DOS flavors and still remembered most of the commands from my DOS gaming days so it was less than an hour of installing the programs and making the old things dust free, no biggie. Plus after I showed the boss what a little kindness and a fair deal would get you he trusted me on such matters. true story-

When I first came to work there the boss would clean off the junk and then hand it back. he wouldn't give them an AV programs, or explain to them about using a safer browser,nothing. So after a little argument over which way was better he let me do it my way on the next client that walked through the door. Wouldn't you know it, the first one that walked through the door was little Velma, the walking disaster. She would click on ANYTHING sent to her in an email, install ANYTHING sent to her, just a walking disaster. So I installed a free AV, set Firefox with an IE skin and showed her how to use it, set the AV to scan all incoming mail, patched her up and sent her on her way. The boss said "well, we'll never see any money from her again". Wrong! We ended up doing her office, all her kinfolks, her girlfriends, her girlfriends kinfolks, etc. For the first week afterwards it would gall the boss no end when someone would call the shop and politely ask for "the biker fellow in the back"(I always wore my leather jacket to work). It was funny to watch my boss go to greet a new customer and start chatting them up only to have them say "That's nice, but is there any way I could have the long haired biker fellow in the back fix my pc? I was told I should ask for him." It was especially funny to hear that from little old ladies trying to find a way to say "long haired biker guy" without making it sound like a put down,LOL!

Moral of the story: Sure you can charge what the market will bear at all times. But then folks will do everything they can to avoid having to take anything to you. Give them a fair price and spend a little time helping them make their computing life easier and they will go out of their way to bring business TO you, as "he was just so nice and helpful when I had a problem". Folks have had so much bad service in this day and age that good service really makes an impression. But that is just my 02c,YMMV.

Re:2014 isn't that far away

[jacksonj04]

If you're still installing XP on an embedded machine in 2014 you have bigger problems than the authentication server shutting down. Like ignoring 10 years of embedded OS development.

Since when does XP require authentication?

[zerkshop]

How many dozen times have I installed XP...

All you do is type in CD key or put it in the answers file. I've never had any "please wait while we connect to the MS server to enable your XP installation..."

Talking about WGA for windows update etc?? Or am I missing out on this little bit for another reason...

Re:Since when does XP require authentication?

[rfunches]

If you have a "corporate" build of WinXP (e.g. 2600) it doesn't require activation. Retail builds do, and even "OEM"-style software I've downloaded through MSDNAA requires activation. Otherwise in 30 days, poof, your access to the OS is limited.

WGA will just lock you out of updates should your software, OS or otherwise, be "not genuine." I don't think anyone's had WGA disable the software yet.

Re:Since when does XP require authentication?

[Almahtar]

Yeah... fun times. I removed a DVD drive from my machine and got locked out by WGA. It'd been more than 30 days since I removed it, and it decided that this was a significant enough hardware change to require re-activation.

So when I finally had to actually use Windows on this machine, I had to suffer through a lengthy phone call to Microsoft before I could actually use my legal copy. Good thing I wasn't in a hurry, and good thing I expect things like that from Windows.

Re:Since when does XP require authentication?

[Anonymous Coward]

WGA will just lock you out of updates should your software, OS or otherwise, be "not genuine." I don't think anyone's had WGA disable the software yet.

WRONG! When the WGA servers for Vista borked, thousands of Vista installs claimed they weren't legit, and refused to show desktops to their users. People (and businesses) couldn't use the OS for which they paid an ass load of money. It took them DAYS to bring them back up, and MS said "oops, that wasn't supposed to happen".

SP1 for Vista removed the big lock-down, something that probably burned them up inside, being that THIS would SOLVE PIRACY FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!! (by ruining the experience and annoying the hell out of paying customers)

Re:Since when does XP require authentication?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing like starting your post with "WRONG!" to make you sound like a 12 year old nerd.

Re:Since when does XP require authentication?

[geoffrobinson]

WRONG!

Nothing like complaining about the style of the post...

I'll stop. I don't want to start an infinite regress.

Re:Since when does XP require authentication?

[punissuer]

I removed a DVD drive from my machine and got locked out by WGA. I've had Windows XP Home require reactivation after I plugged in and unplugged a USB wireless adapter several times.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

what can anyone expect. the reviews of the Zune said they were lame, MS makes lame products, what would anyone expect. Get what you pay for.

Yo Ho, Yo Ho

[Anonymous Coward]

Yo Ho, Yo Ho, a pirate's life for me.
All of my music is DRM free.
Walk the plank, suckers.

Microsoft still advertising PlaysForSure

[Animats]

Microsoft is still promoting PlaysForSure. "Same Compatibility Promise - Different Name".

What part of "false advertising" did you not understand.

FairUse4WM

[rubies]

Find it, use it, be happy.

Probably what will happen to XP soon

[Snaller]

No more "activation" - I doubt Microsoft has the moral fiber to disable activation in their last patch.

PlaysForSure engineers burn in hell

[heroine]

Know a lot of people who worked like crazy to get PlaysForSure to work on the BluRay stack. That was a huge project. When these huge standards go out of business, years of work & 14 hour days vaporizes. That's the reality standards.

Just another music industry blunder

[BanjoBob]

I can't believe that the presidents and CEOs of the music labels and the RIAA are still in their positions. Blunder after blunder after blunder and they still have their jobs! I need to get a job like that (or weather man or stock analyst) where I can be wrong much more than I'm right and still have a job!

They tried to kill an evolving technology again. It has never worked before so they tried it again. Guess what? It didn't work again.

They then attacked their customers rather than innovate and provide a value added suite of add-ons to the music. It didn't work so they decide to continue the litigation game. Guess what? It didn't work again.

They could have kept the CD alive but they chose not to. The movie industry has managed to keep the DVD and even the VHS Tape world alive by giving the consumer more for less. The music industry decided long ago that greed was more precious than customer satisfaction.

Now DRM will kill some music forever in the future. Long after copyrights expire (if they aren't changed again), the music won't have DRM keys around to unlock it. Future generations will not have the music to enjoy. Was it worth the price?

Virtualize it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Build a vm.

Authorize your vm.

Move the vm around as you need with the DRM crap/player inside. As far as the DRM moves, the "virtual machine" is the same no matter what hardware it sits on, right?

Re:Virtualize it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be very surprised if WMP isn't "aware" it's running in a VM and set to refuse authorization. VMware even provides hooks to tell. And how many people naive enough to have paid for digital restrictions-encumbered tracks do you think would even know enough to try?

Re:Virtualize it.

[shentino]

Xen?

Bochs?

Qemu?

Come on, you can't be saying that hooky blabbermouth VMware is the only option...can you?

Re:Virtualize it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't saying it's the only option, but that VMware provides hooks to tell a running program it's in a VM. With open source virtualization, it's possible to obfuscate or remove any hooks, but I don't think many people will be doing that.

How many will this affect?

[Sir Holo]

Will this affect many people at all? I don't think I know anyone who bought Plays-for-Sure(TM) tracks.

How many customers were there?

Another shit pulled by microsoft on customers

[unity100]

PAYING customers to boot too !! last shit they pulled was pulling the plug on bCentral ecommerce service they were running, many of you who are not affiliated with ecommerce industry or web development havent probably heard it. they gave the customers only 1 month's notice to pack up their stores and leave or migrate to the ecommerce service they dumped the customers on, which didnt have enough experience with oscommerce framework they were planning to move everybody on, causing a lot of horrible experience for the store owners and lost sales. a lot of people couldnt pack up their 2000+ product, thousands of customer data containing stores in sufficient time if they wanted to move, hell, even many of the stores who let the new contractor to do their migration were messed up.

this is the microsoft way. if you havent learned it up to this date, you are either a fanboi or were living in a cave.

Night of the Living Ogg

[goombah99]

The Ogg Vorbis breaths have a few moments in which they can be legitimately smug and shake their rio players at us fools who use Fairplay or Zune, or use that patented MP3 format.

Okay.. times up. Now back to reality.

Re:Night of the Living Ogg

[cayenne8]

"The Ogg Vorbis breaths have a few moments in which they can be legitimately smug and shake their rio players at us fools who use Fairplay or Zune, or use that patented MP3 format.

Not me...I voted FLAC .

:-)

Re:Night of the Living Ogg

[Chris Mattern]

Not me...I voted FLAC .

Those are the guys with the duck, right?

Re:Night of the Living Ogg

[mikelieman]

Not just Rios. ROCKBOX works on all sorts of hardware ( I'm using a Sansa E270, myself, but I hear it works on a lot of iPod hardware, too. )

http://www.rockbox.org/

Rockbox is an open source firmware for mp3 players, written from scratch. It runs on a wide range of players:

        * Apple: 1st through 5.5th generation iPod, iPod Mini and 1st generation iPod Nano
            (not the Shuffle, 2nd/3rd gen Nano, Classic or Touch)
        * Archos: Jukebox 5000, 6000, Studio, Recorder, FM Recorder, Recorder V2 and Ondio
        * Cowon: iAudio X5, X5V, X5L, M5, M5L, M3 and M3L
        * iriver: H100, H300 and H10 series
        * Olympus: M:Robe 100
        * SanDisk: Sansa c200, e200 and e200R series (not the v2 models)
        * Toshiba: Gigabeat X and F series (not the S series)

Re:Is there any chance?

[cayenne8]

"Is there any chance they will do the right thing and provide a conversion utility to convert the DRM songs into non-DRM songs so the purchaser doesn't have the songs stolen back from them. If not, I smell a lawsuit.."

I wonder if anyone has a copy of the term of service for this...to see if MS covered their asses on this possibility?

I would buy it if they disabled activation

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer Linux, but up until XP I always also bought Microsoft OSs, too, right off the shelf at the local store. It had its uses (games, tax software - that's about it).

But product activation was a supreme Fuck You from Microsoft to paying customers like me. So I didn't buy XP. And I won't buy Vista. I'll just make do with what I have and enjoy Linux as it gets better and better.

Re:Is there any chance?

[Slashdot Suxxors]

I have a solution. The solution is available in packs of 100 for ten dollars. It is called.... CD-R. Just burn them and re-rip. Of course there will be a loss in quality, but somehow I doubt that the MSN music was encoded in anything higher than 128Kbps.

Re:Is there any chance?

[Technician]

I have a solution. The solution is available in packs of 100 for ten dollars.

I have a better solution that is working just fine. Boycott DRM. If it fails in the marketplace, it will go away. We have a vote. It's the dollar. Vote wisely and often.

I have no PC at home using WGA. Sometimes you get outvoted for the mainstream product, but you don't have to buy it.

Those who don't remember DIVX-Silver are doomed ..

[Anonymous Coward]

When Circuit City pulled the plug on DIVX (an inferior and more highly DRMed form of DVD), all of the "DIVX-Silver" discs stopped working.

Circuit City (and the Hollywood lawyers?) ended up refunding all of the money paid for DIVX-Silver "upgrades". Circuit City also took something like a $100 to $150 million bath.

Valve Steam

[mgiuca]

Now here is my big concern: The same thing could happen for games, with Valve building up an ever-increasing selection of titles on Steam.

When I buy a Steam game, I pay money and then the game is permanently activated in my Steam account. Aside from the fact I can't transfer it to another account, and Valve can shutdown my account at will, IF Steam ever did "go dark", then I wouldn't have any games left ...

It's worse for games because unlike music, you really have no choice (for certain games) whether you want to buy them on Steam or not.

Re:Valve Steam

[Doppler00]

Yeah I was skeptical of steam when it first came out for this same reason. But I went with it because I figure I'm saving them money and getting rid of all the middle men that box up software. But now... a company as big as Microsoft abandoning a music authentication server? Wow... I mean, it just worries me that 10 years from now I may not be able to load up Half Life 2 and show my kids what video games used to be like. I mean, I can still load Doom and Quake just fine (although I can't figure out how to get Quake CTF working).

Steam really should have a "retirement" system where a game doesn't require internet activation after say 5 or so years of it being on the market. I mean, in good faith and all to their customers.

Re:Valve Steam

[mgiuca]

Yeah, that would be a good policy.

Some high up person at Valve stated unofficially somewhere (there is a link from the Steam article on wikipedia) that if Steam ever closed, then they would provide a retirement system so you wouldn't lose your games. But that hardly makes me feel secure.

If you sit and read the Steam TOS it's quite frightening. To summarize: "Valve reserves the right to do whatever it wants with regards to your account. We own all the games. We own your account. You are enjoying our benevolent service."

Re:Valve Steam

[comm2k]

The very reason I will never buy anything from Steam. If MS (with their huge pockets) can screw their paying customers then I see no reason why Valve couldn't.

Re:Valve Steam

[mgiuca]

Yup, I totally agree, except that Team Fortress 2 is awesome and I had to sell out :(

(Which is the whole problem - how will you be entertained with games if in Valve's future all games are on steam, assuming you want to stick to your guns).

I can envision in the future, the "history of computer games" will have this "dark age" which "not much is known about" in the era of ~2007-20xx because the game makers back then wouldn't let people take physical copies of their games. Let us try to minimize xx.

Re:Valve Steam

[TheGratefulNet]

maybe you need to stop thinking games are SO essential to life?

just a thought...

(same applies to TV, movies and the rest of the 'output' from hollywood. hollywood could also 'go dark' and life would still go on. quite nicely, too, I think).

Re:Valve Steam

[mgiuca]

Yes but the idea is not that I'm reliant on games, it's that I paid money for them and therefore I should be able to use them.

It's more of a legality/morality issue.

Competition, capitalism and DRM

[totally bogus dude]

Never forget that DRM means you are dependent on a company ... as long as you want to be able to access that music, the company has to let you.

Another problem is that the economic system of the western world is based upon competition between different people/businesses offering essentially the same product, and thus having to compete with each other on quality and price.

As a natural result of this, it is expected that the majority of businesses will fail to be profitable and therefore go under. While unfortunate for the people involved in the business, for most people this is fine -- it simply means they weren't offering a compelling enough product compared to the competition.

For a consumer of DRM-encumbered media, this is a highly undesirable event. Therefore, consumers will actually desire to minimise competition -- new players offering better pricing or better quality of service are a lot less compelling, because if they fail to become profitable before their initial cash reserves run out, anything you've bought from them instantly becomes worthless.

As such, DRM is essentially anti-capitalist and will naturally lead to a monopoly, or at best oligopoly situation. It's no wonder Big Business is so desperate to get people to accept it. It's never been about protecting artists' rights, it's always been about creating lock-in.

Everyone crack the DRM!

[onekopaka]

If they're not going to be giving out anymore keys, than you might as well crack the DRM and they won't do anything about it.

Re:Everyone crack the DRM!

[MacWiz]

Slow down there. This is the music business AND Microsoft we're talking about. You were applying actual logic. That'll get you in trouble every time.

Cracking the DRM is still a DMCA violation, even if there is no legitimate way to read the content.

Re:Everyone crack the DRM!

[onekopaka]

Microsoft is Crap. Remember?

And the DMCA is why you move to Sweden.

We aren't afraid of M$. Your forgetting why GNU/Linux exists.

Re:Everyone crack the DRM!

[MacWiz]

I wasn't arguing with you. Yes, M$ is crap. So is DRM.

Just saying that it's a mistake to think they don't care.

Not that I think they can do a damn thing about it.

Fixed for u

[Anonymous Coward]

a great disturbance on the Internet, as if seven of Plays For Sure musicplayers suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

Almost, but not quite

[Anonymous Coward]

They're merely at the embrace part of their strategic plan to launch a takeover bid for piratebay. Once everyone is reliant on the warez version of XP, they can extend into a strategic partnership.

mod up insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

interesting take

Release the Source!

[CranberryKing]

It's laughable to think MS would do it, but wtf? Why not? They aren't going to make a nickel more off of their scheme. Why not gpl the servers and no doubt some kind souls would host it for a_while on some crap servers some where. I mean MS should host it themselves but if they are just going to be complete dicks it's the least they could do.

What really gets me...

[seandiggity]

...is that the bastards had the audacity to call it "PlaysForSure".

Ironic

[Arancaytar]

The only thing that we know for sure is that that music won't play anymore. :P

Time for a simple, new law.

[NuclearKangaroo]

If you sell or license something that:

  a) isn't advertised as limited in any context of time of ownership (i.e. a lease or a rental), and

  b) choose to discontinue any services necessary to preserve a consumer's rightful access to said product, YOU MUST UNLOCK IT UNDER CONSIDERABLE PENALTY OF LAW.

If a company folds without fulfilling this obligation, the necessary assets (including the DRM code) are seized to allow for the successful discharging of this responsibility, with priority over any other creditor.

Consumers Should Know

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I'm sure there were people who paid good money to buy audio tracks. Not rent, *buy*.

It's what they paid for. I'm not generally a person who vindicates others for making bad choices, but this is a good reason why people should be careful what they buy. Do any of the customers have any legal recourse over this? Can they sue MS?

If there is one outcome from this, it should be to force companies to warn people of what they're paying for. There should be notices, saying that the product may become temporarily or even permanently unusable at any time. DRM is not evil, like the OP suggested, just a mistake with unforeseen consequences (OK, perhaps not unforeseen by anyone with any foresight). It's high time people truly knew what they were paying for.

Re:Is there any chance?

[caluml]

I have 2 votes then. It's call the British Pound. :)

Why don't you...?

[Serious Callers Only]

I sometimes wonder if you are yourself a part of twitter's multi-faceted personality, posting to draw attention to his posts. Sort of like Norman's mother in Psycho.

Your commitment to fighting the injustice which is twitter using several accounts on Slashdot is awesome, and unrelenting, but the best thing to do with someone like that is to ignore them when they say something stupid, not to give them more attention.

People game accounts on sites like this all the time, some of them are scripts, some looking for notoriety in some small way, some just bored, but it really doesn't matter; because it's just a website.

sucks .. but isn't going to "educated" the masses

[atarione]

on the evils of DRM now if itunes where to implode and turn off the authorization servers the masses would be in full rebellion. in this case most people will barely notice except the 6 people that actually signed up and bought music from MSN Music.

I see this as a good thing

[ditoa]

Personally I think this is fantastic news. I am sorry to the MSN customers who are being shafted by this but it proves that DRM is crap. I have had dozens of discussions with people over the past few years (since iTMS) about how DRM is evil and everybody always replies with "Yeah but will never do that! Stop being a silly paranoid fool". Examples like this are just ammo in the fight against DRM. Tell everybody who supports DRM'd media about it.

Also part of me wonders if Microsoft are doing this on purpose? I know it sounds weird as Microsoft are not anti-DRM however they run thousands of redundant servers but keep them around because it makes no difference to them. So why retire just these servers? I find it difficult to believe they see very high load. If you read between the lines it also reads as if they are doing this to damage DRM more than anything else.

Re:I see this as a good thing

[DuctTape]

Also part of me wonders if Microsoft are doing this on purpose?

Wellll, I think that MS is trying to do the same thing that happens whenever a new music format comes out: make you buy it again.

In the immortal words of K. in Men in Black, "This is gonna replace CDs soon; guess I'll have to buy the White Album again."

DT

Re:I see this as a good thing

[TheGratefulNet]

MS is in BED with drm! vista is 95% all about drm and 'user control' via policies, access control points, 'updates' that ruin things and polier processes in the o/s.

MS loves DRM. have you seen MS revert back to NOT having activation? WGA and all that??

no, this is not about MS backing out of the DRM camp. something else is going on, but its NOT about them admitting DRM is bad or a failure. come on, I know you weren't born yesterday...

what they have up their sleeves is anyone's guess, though. it does seem odd that they are turning this 'service' off. it must have had security issues (to them) or legal issues or some kind of reason it would be in their benefit to turn this off.

An Even Better Solution...

[atrocious cowpat]

"I have a solution. The solution is available in packs of 100 for ten dollars. [...]"

I have an even better (more eviller) * solution:

My solution is available in packs of units of whatever scale of value you may use, but they will never completely add up to match any purchase you'll ever make. No matter what you buy -- you'll always have unused units left over, or not enough units to buy what you currently desire. By this evingenious invention I shall rule the... what? Someone already did this?

Oh damn and confound this broken Time Machine!
_____________
(*) "eviller", "more eviller", and "evingenious" are (c) + TM 3003 Prof. Farnsworth

Re:Is there any chance?

[Xest]

Yes, just don't spend it here in Britain itself else it'll only buy you half a vote ;)

Re:Is there any chance?

[PinkyDead]

Boo hoo! I only have a Euro, which means I have 0.79 the voting power of you.

0.80....
0.81...
0.82.....

Re:Is there any chance?

[FireFury03]

I have a solution. The solution is available in packs of 100 for ten dollars. It is called.... CD-R. Just burn them and re-rip. ...Which is illegal in the UK. So if you're going to break the law you may as well just crack the DRM (which is easier and cheaper anyway).

DOLE/KEMP 96 *=

[Anonymous Coward]

^sig

Bill Richardson, the most-qualified Presidential candidate:
http*://www.richardsonforpresident.com/about

Richardson is out of the race. Your sig is not a bumper sticker.

Re:DOLE/KEMP 96 *=

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks. I forgot that I had left that there.

All I can say is...

[MattPat]

Oh Microsoft, you silly goose.

Upgrade or die?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me or does this sound like M$ tring people to upgrade to Vista. "OMG if you don't upgrade to Vista before August then you will have to listen to your music using XP FOREVER". Or I could just me over thinkiing this... or could I?

Re:Upgrade or die?

[neminem]

More like, if you migrate to Vista and then decide it sucks, and want to upgrade back to XP, sucks to be you if you have any music. So better just stick with what you have!

The Dark Age

[argent]

I can envision in the future, the "history of computer games" will have this "dark age" which "not much is known about" in the era of ~2007-20xx because the game makers back then wouldn't let people take physical copies of their games.

Remove the "of computer games" part and you've got one of the major subplots in Charlie Stross's recent novel "Glasshouse".

Also relevant comment in another recent slashdot thread.

Re:The Dark Age

[mgiuca]

Interesting ... I'll wiki that ;)

So, when will Microsoft turn off XP?

[argent]

I think "disabled activation" means "you can't activate your copy of XP any more" not "you don't need to activate it any more".

So, when do you think Microsoft will turn off XP? 2010? 2015?

Re:Is there any chance?

[mc900ftjesus]

Apple fanboys are mentally incapable of boycotting Apple. Why do you think they're stuck with iTMS DRM and horrifically overpriced, DRM'ed Intel hardware?

Re:An Even Better Solution...

[Alzheimers]

but they will never completely add up to match any purchase you'll ever make.

Sounds like the legendary collusion between the hotdog packagers and the bun manufacturers.

Really?

[willeyhill]

Your account is dedicated to offtopic twitter crap, but you seem to be well rewarded for your effort. This is because you are part of a sock puppet army dedicated to crapflooding Slashdot. You hate twitter for hijacking and otherwise subverting your efforts.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the latest in a long line of twitter sockpuppets, willeyhill!

You really need to pick a better method of choosing sockpuppet names. The "impostor" method has been worked out. Or didn't you think anybody would notice westlake/westbake and Macthorpe/Mactrope?

Just face up to the fact: Twitter, you have been shunned by the very community you claim to represent.

Re:Is there any chance?

[Andy Dodd]

Except that many of these music stores (unlike Apple) have DRM flags set with the "Do not allow burning to CD" flag.

MS won't provide a utility (too easy to apply to DRM from other stores), but plenty of utilities already exist to achieve this goal.

PlaysForSure

[borud]

I love that name. Not many product names manage to include a promise in them -- which is then broken.

PlaysForNever?

[deander2]

=P

What's the big fat hairy deal anyway?

[Qbertino]

Nobody needs the RIAA and it's members anymore.

A friend of mine takes every chance to make a point of him not buy from RIAA companies anymore. He buys independant and small label only since a few years now. You get the stuff as download from the web, in FLAC quality if you wish, it's all non-drm and the variety is *huge*. Something for every taste. There are countless websites offering DRM free music that way. A good place to start is Magnatune. I recently bought an album from the German indie chillout/ambient crew moodorama. It's great. And those 10 Euros for an entire album go straight to the band. ... And just visiting their indie-publisher to test the link tells me I'm probably going to do some music shopping this afternoon.

Bottom line:
NOBODY needs the RIAA crew anymore - not even people like me, listening to stuff like chillout(!!). Especially not the people technically savy enough to know what a piece of crap DRM is and what dickheads the people are forcing it on to the end-users. I.E. all of us slashdotters. SO STOP F*CKING BUYING/LISTENING TO RIAA CRAP! Problem solved.

Re:Is there any chance?

[Fahrvergnuugen]

Just yesterday I was looking for a song that I wanted to buy. It's not available on iTunes Plus (DRM Free) or the Amazon MP3 store.

I found a copy of the whole album used on Amazon for $.96.

So I legally bought the whole copy protection free album for less than the cost of the single DRM laden song.

I felt kinda odd because I haven't purchased a physical CD in over 10 years.

Re:Is there any chance?

[Opportunist]

You're talking about MS here. My money is on "they did".

Re:Is there any chance?

[Opportunist]

Could it be that you read that wrong? Currently, my Euro buys me 1.6 green bucks. Wait, 1.7... 2.1.

I have to go! :)

Re:Is there any chance?

[greenzrx]

I have a solution. The solution is available in packs of 100 for ten dollars. It is called.... CD-R. Why not just burn them to an ISO on your hard disk, then rip them from that. There, I just saved you $10.00

Virtual burn?

[maillemaker]

>You find it reasonable to dig out a CD(-R, erase), burn, rip, encode, and tag every album or track you buy?

I'm surprised someone hasn't made software that rips to a virtual CD, re-rips, re-encodes, and tags all in one step.

Dude! Where's my Tunes?

[dukeZ]

With Apple, you may be locked in, but that's better than being locked out! At least Apple wants customers, instead of wanting to get rid of them.

It just goes to show that Microsoft does not really care about music, customers, or even really trying to provide their customers a service.

And I find it ironic that they're not even trying to "migrate" their customers to their latest schizophrenic, half-baked music scheme now...

Re:Is there any chance?

[caluml]

Or a thimbleful of diesel. £1.19 a litre! Sheesh. I'll let some American work that out in $/gallon. Then they won't grumble about $3/gallon. Here's something to help you on your way.

Several options

[Anonymous Coward]

I've done most of them. They work (at least in the UK).

1) Don't pay. Continue not paying. When court case comes along, state "there is no proof that I owe". When the "proof" comes through, your counter is to pass on to the judge the evidence you have not used the goods. Judge either closes the process or if you go to court, you CAN get your compensation for time and trouble taken.

2) Counterclaim. Assess to the court via small claims that they are attempting to extract money you do not owe. They will stop and you'll get your filing fee back.

What's probably happening for you is that the collection agency hasn't been told that the debt is annulled (even if they're the same company, this can happen: there's no downside to not informing and some upsides possible). So just mail back and tell them that you have cleared the debt and given them the judgement number.

If they continue to pester you, small claims court, sue for damages (court case costs from before) and request the judge take them to criminal court for their actions.

And your point is?

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter isn't in gaol. His comment CAN be marked up to +5 if YOU want to.

However, since (s)he's posted utter crap a LOT, it's unlikely that anything said has any utility at all, and anything that does seem to be insightful is merely being parroted out to gain karma for further crap postings.

Re:Is there any chance?

[Jaqenn]

I have a solution. The solution is available in packs of 100 for ten dollars... I swear I thought you were about to say ammunition.

Re:Is there any chance?

[Cajun Hell]

Is there any chance they will do the right thing and provide a conversion utility to convert the DRM songs into non-DRM songs so the purchaser doesn't have the songs stolen back from them.

It would be a DMCA violation for Microsoft to traffic in such a tool. Doing the right thing is illegal.

Re:Is there any chance?

[holyspidoo]

I have a Looney... ugh, my vote is not gonna count, is it?

I don't buy from the iTunesMusicStore

[crovira]

Almost all of my music is media shifted vinyl, CDs or its downloaded DRM-less from the PMN (the podsafe music network) so saying that the monopoly is to ignore the fact that the iTMS has sold X billion DRMed tunes while X' billion tunes were ripped the same way. (I have a bookcase full of 'archival' CDs and another full of vinyl.)

I'd be interested if someone worked the storage requirement of all of Apple's iTMS sales versus the total storage space available on all the iPods currently out there.

You ARE correct in stating that songs downloaded from the iTMS have Apple's DRM, (at least until you burn them to a CD [CD-RW anyone,], wipe the originals = and re-import them. :-)

Take your "DRM only" crap outta here.

Re:Is there any chance?

[Shai-kun]

Why not just post the full link?

The FR is greater that that.

[crovira]

Your ear can hear 20-20k Hz pure sinusoidal sound, but you never hear pure sinusoidal sound.

The blending of several higher frequency tones resulting in an average 22k Hz is what you hear at your top end, but your audio equipment has to be able to handle up to 96k Hz to reproduce audio adequately.

That said, I had a Nakamichi cassette desk that darn near could, well, until the tape degraded and introduced wow or flutter or hiss.

I know everyone is bitching but...

[Orig_Club_Soda]

Don't buy DRM if you don't like it. Besides traditional media like 78s, 33s, 45s, 8-track have all become useless due to changes in technology. Additionally, those formats PLUS cassettes and CD wear out or become unusable over time. At least in this case you can burn it to an audio CD which will give you better quality than copying any of these other media formats. And you can copy this CD perpetually without a loss of quality.

Why turn off the servers?!

[NotBornYesterday]

Didn't see a reason why in the summary or article, but managed to find this with the following:

"every time there is an OS upgrade, the DRM equation gets complex very quickly," said Bennett, general manager of entertainment, video, and sports for MSN. "Every time, you saw support issues. People would call in because they couldn't download licenses. We had to write new code, new configurations each time...We really believe that, going forward, the best thing to do is focus exclusively on Zune."

Paraphrasing, then: We are f**king you, the valued customer, because we can't write an OS that doesn't implode our own DRM. You should buy something else from us instead!

The troll clarifies

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks so much. I mean, you even "gloat". Priceless.

Re:Is there any chance?

[ckaminski]

£1.19 per liter in $ per gallon == $8.8308/gallon.

That sucks!

Translated from MS speak

[sjames]

Dear servants. We know we promised to actually give you what you paid for, but we decided we don't want to, so at some time after August, we'll be breaking in to your house and stealing that music back.

We're sure you won't mind because you've always been such a good doggie lapping up whatever slop we care to splatter into your bowl.

So quit whining and cough up some cash. Daddy needs a new senator...

Re:Is there any chance?

[V for Vendetta]

Just burn them and re-rip.

This is exactly what MS recommends the users to do. Two problems that arise here: You and I now know that this format will close down soon and we both are able to do just this, if we bought from there. My father surely doesn't get "the memo", hence no chance for him to prepare his files.

Second, and this is another nice evil twist to this story, according to German copyright laws, you're not allowed to do so! MS might recommend all they want, they can't "recommend" a law away.

This clearly shows how stupid both DRM and current copyright laws are.

video Hi-Fi vs. audiocassette

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding me? VHS (and Beta, and 8mm) Hi-Fi stereo audio quality is far superior to that of any bog-standard audiocassette recording, particularly on better decks. Audiocassette may be comparable to linear stereo VHS audio with Dolby B NR in quality, but in no way can analog audiocassette match VHS Hi-Fi. Back in the day, I switched completely over to JVC S-VHS and Sony Hi8 Hi-Fi audio recordings from medium-grade audiocassette recording equipment, and never looked back.

The only possible advantage that better audiocassette decks from your Nakamichi, Denon, Arcam, or Teac might have over a typical VHS Hi-Fi deck would be in the audio processing electronics. Otherwise, even EP-mode VHS recording is far superior in both bandwidth (thanks both to the greater recording surface and the more advanced compression scheme as compared to any form of Dolby NR up to and including S, therefore leading to its far superior dynamic range and S/N) and tracking accuracy (helical scan requires greater precision than linear scan, and even the cheapest of VHS decks provides it) - assuming you use the same deck for recording and playback and/or move between decks with either identical tracking characteristics or automatic/dynamic tracking.

All moot, however, when you consider the option of recording your DRM'd audio right back to your computer by creating an analog loopback.

BTW - $1000 spent on Microsoft-encumbered audio data? What the HELL?

Re:Is there any chance?

[Rakarra]

Or a thimbleful of diesel. £1.19 a litre! Sheesh. I'll let some American work that out in $/gallon. Then they won't grumble about $3/gallon.

Eh, we all pay the same price anyway. It's just that the US government subsidizes the fuel price, which we pay back through taxes. Or through borrowing from China.

Re:Is there any chance?

[Rakarra]

How much is that in Disneyland Dollars?