Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Wal-Mart Ends DRM Support

Posted by Soulskill on from the enjoy-your-rights dept.

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."

17 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. refund by poopdeville · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't know Wallyworld's terms of service, but are the customers within their rights to demand refunds?

    --
    After all, I am strangely colored.
    1. Re:refund by EastCoastSurfer · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Wal-mart for all its problems is pretty liberal with its return policy. My guess is that if you could talk to someone who even knew they sold music online they would either a) give you a refund or b) give you the tracks again DRM-free.

    2. Re:refund by Techguy666 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I don't know Wallyworld's terms of service, but are the customers within their rights to demand refunds?

      I suspect it depends on whether they use the term "purchase" anywhere on the eula or site...

    3. Re:refund by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      A better choice would be to sue Walmart (and all other DRM providers that shut down. Since they "sold" you a song, if they remove the ability to listen to it, then there was a fraudulent transaction (i.e. they represented it as a sale, but it was not a true sale).

      This would be a very interesting court batter with profound implications for the industry.

    4. Re:refund by electrictroy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Sometimes in order to catch a thief, you have to use the tactics of a thief (deception, buying black market goods, and using weapons). Example: Dish Network sold me a digital tuner box which was so poorly-programmed, it barely worked. A few months later Dish released v1.06 with all the bugs removed, and since my warranty was still good, I asked to exchange boxes.

      Dish refused saying they had no record of me as a customer. They lost the sale! Idiots. So since Dish effectively defrauded me, I decided to borrow a page from the same book. (1) I bought a brand-new revision v.106 box. (2) When the package arrived, I swapped the tuners and returned my defective v1.00 box. (3) I contacted my credit card company, explained the situation, and provided proof the item was returned to Dish. (4) The credit company reversed the charge. (5) It costs me about 5 dollars in postage, but at least now I have a working digital tuner.

      Dish tried to scam me via selling a defective box, and failed. And now Walmart's trying to do the same thing; if necessary I would find a way to recover the money. Perhaps the credit card company could reverse the charge for this now-broken DRM and worthless Walmart music. If not there are other ways your credit card could help you recover the money you lost.

      --
      The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
    5. Re:refund by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      In other words, why go to court when you can take the law into your own hands.

    6. Re:refund by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      that might be true for most companys.

      but this is wal-mart.

    7. Re:refund by shoemilk · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Wasn't there also a ruling that said downloads off of P2P don't count as backups? Or was that something the RIAA was trying to push?

  2. In Massachusetts? by Alex+Pennace · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I wonder if this would count as an unfair and deceptive practice as described in Massachusetts G.L. 93A.

  3. HAHAHA tag? by zappepcs · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A lot of people said it, long ago. DRM won't work for this very reason (and many others) and now those who were legal, and honest, and bought DRM'd content have to suffer AGAIN. It's not just Wal-Mart, how many other content providers also shut down, or screwed their customers by dropping or changing the DRM.

    Me? I'm still sitting back, waiting for the industry to calm down and pull their heads out. Punishing the customer won't stop the criminals, never will. Now that the US Dollar is about to be worth ... next to nothing, they will have to kiss customer's asses to get them to spend money. We'll see how this all plays out. Even the DOJ doesn't like the **AA's game plan. It's falling apart on them. Wal-Mart is NOT a small retailer. This is a large nail in the coffin that DRM will be put to rest in.

    --
    Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
    1. Re:HAHAHA tag? by princessproton · · Score: 1, Interesting

      People are STILL buying DRM tracks?? At this point I don't blame the retailers, but the consumer. Amazon has been selling DRM free tracks for a long time now, and they're usually cheaper to boot!

      Sometimes there's really no other choice. I have about 15 Wal-Mart DRM tracks because it was the ONLY place I could find those particular songs/arrangements. For less popular genres (choral, instrumental, karaoke, etc.) it can often be difficult to find viable alternatives since they are often too rare to download and not offered DRM-free anywhere else.

      --
      I'm always positive; it's my nature.
  4. Almost had to re-buy all of their music... by Doug52392 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My sister (who is obsessed with music) bought hundreds of dollars worth of music from Wal-Mart's music downloading service. Recently, her MP3 player started acting strange and refused to play any DRM songs, so I had to reformat the whole MP3 player and resync all of her music to it. (There was also serious filesystem corruption)

    If Wal-Mart had ended their DRM support yesterday...

  5. Won't someone think of the marketers? by David+Gerard · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Incidents like this, as well as the general pain in the backside factor, mean that customers loathe and despise DRM.

    But the marketers know their major label affiliated clients insist on DRM.

    So what do they do? Lie. Sony and Nokia, MySpace - all advertised as "DRM-free" and never mind the little detail of being nothing of the sort!

    Don't you have truth in advertising laws there or something?

    --
    http://rocknerd.co.uk
  6. Unexpected by Minervine · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Having purchased a DRM track from Wal-Mart a long time ago to try out the service, I received an e-mail recently from them about the service shutdown. Interestingly enough, they provided this advice to users:

    If you have purchased protected WMA music files from our site prior to Feb 2008, we strongly recommend that you back up your songs by burning them to a recordable audio CD. By backing up your songs, you will be able to access them from any personal computer.

    I didn't expect them to okay users to resort to the analog-hole, something that many companies and legislators have been trying to stop for years. Will other DRM services be this forgiving when they shut down their servers?

  7. Re:DRM is dead by Graff · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I don't see iTunes and FairPlay going anywhere anytime soon. Hell, even after their spat earlier in the year when NBC moved to Amazon after Apple said no to their pricing scheme is now back on iTunes. But then again, I've said Apple got it right years ago. Offers some kind of production the media companies want, yet once I download it, I am free do whatever I want, like burning to CD's, installing and playing on a number of PC's/MP3 players, etc. without a lot of hassles. In the end, consumers don't mind DRM so long as it is reasonable.

    True but that being said, I'm glad that Apple is pushing the music companies for DRM-free music. iTunes Plus is a great thing, you get higher quality, DRM-free music for about the same price as the lower quality, DRM music. Apple even has a way for you to convert your old music to iTunes Plus so you don't have to worry about the old DRM stuff.

    Now if they can only get all of the music companies on board so all of my songs could be DRM-free then I'd truly be happy. Until then I'll buy DRM-free stuff from iTunes and buy and rip CDs for the rest. Then again maybe I'll just altogether skip the companies that don't support iTunes Plus in the first place...

    --
    Sapere aude!
  8. DRM's limited lifetime by Adrian+Lopez · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "But that's never going to happen to [DRM service X]. The company behind [DRM service X] is just too big and profitable!"

    --
    "In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
  9. DRM Escrow by peterofoz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Companies that sell or license products with the built in DRM time bomb should have to put the keys to that product into a software escrow. The escrow acts as a kind of insurance against the company going out of business or to discontinue the service. This approach has been used by large companies for years to ensure the source code for the expensive new core system they bought from a start up would be around if the start up should fail. This will probably take some kind of government regulation to make it happen because individual consumers are too small to push this through. Anyone want to start such a service? It would probably just involve parking some servers in a data center with 2 or 3 spares in the box and maintaining them for 20 years. We can call it The National Museum of DRM Failure.