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Wal-Mart Ends DRM Support
An anonymous reader writes "So, you thought you did well to support the fledgling music industry by purchasing your tracks legally from the Wal-Mart store? Well, forget about moving these tracks to a new PC! Since they started selling DRM-free tracks last year, there's no money to be made in maintaining the DRM support systems, and in fact, support is being shut down. Make sure you circumvent the restrictions by burning the tracks to an old-fashioned CD before Wal-mart 'will no longer be able to assist with digital rights management issues for protected WMA files purchased from Walmart.com.' Support ends October 9th."
...why we have a problem with their newest DRM model.
(Yes, I'm aware they claim they'll release a patch before they turn off the servers, but if they go bankrupt tomorrow and can't PAY anyone to develop said patch, then what?)
Why isn't there a tracker page at Defective By Design for how many of these DRM services have died? Google's video, Yahoo's music service, MSN Music, MTV, MLB.tv, CSS, etc?
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
While I agree that fairplay is likely to be around for a fair while yet, it isn't all that structurally different from the DRM used in this case. Subscription service WMDRM phones home frequently, so a shutdown of the activation servers will actively hose you within 30 days or so; but ordinary "purchased" WMDRM tracks are playable for the life of activated machines, as with fairplay. If fairplay activation servers went down, you'd be exactly as hosed as the people in TFA(which is to say, as soon as you need to activate a new device).