Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Walmart Caves On DRM Removal

Posted by kdawson on from the just-kidding dept.

cmunic8r99 writes in with an email he received from walmart.com yesterday evening about the pending shutdown of their DRM services (which we discussed a while back). Walmart has reconsidered and won't be shutting off its DRM servers after all. They are still moving to an all-MP3 store, but won't break all the DRMed music its customers have already downloaded; this because of "feedback from the customers."

26 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Wal-Mart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Only did this so that people wouldn't sue them.

    1. Re:Wal-Mart by Gewalt · · Score: 4, Insightful

      this because of "feedback from the customers."

      Only did this so that people wouldn't sue them.

      You say tomato, I say fruit. Whatever.

      --
      Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
    2. Re:Wal-Mart by jlarocco · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Only did this so that people wouldn't sue them.

      What's your point? Walmart was looking out for their bottom line? You don't really think Walmart is in business because they get warm fuzzy feelings selling cheap shit to cheap people, do you? A lawsuit would have been an expensive waste of time for everybody involved, and they almost certainly would have lost. It was clearly in Walmart's best interest to avoid it.

      That's the way it's supposed to work.

      --
      Maybe not
    3. Re:Wal-Mart by davmoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Horse shit. Walmart spends more on toilet paper for their in-store restrooms in a month than a lawsuit over this would have cost them. Plus I'd be willing to bet that there is fine print in the user agreement for all those DRMed tracks somewhere that says words to the effect of "we can turn it off any time with a few days notice and its your problem not ours".

      It probably really was customer feedback and the fact that this was making Walmart look bad. Bad press is far more damaging than some piddly ol' nickel and dime lawsuit.

      --
      I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
    4. Re:Wal-Mart by the_arrow · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't think I've ever burned my hand on a toaster..

      Might it have something to do with you knowing that it is hot, i.e. using your common sense? I will probably be modded flamebait, bit it seems to me that most people in the US of A simply have lost their common sense. While having non-hot toasters, do you also wait with getting the bread from it? Because, you know, it might be hot and you can feel a burning sensation? Well if you do, the obvious choice is of course to sue the maker of the toaster!

      --
      / The Arrow
      "How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
    5. Re:Wal-Mart by gsgriffin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You're funny, Flamebait! Looks bad from the outside looking in. You see and hear only the stories that are most "newsworthy" and what the media finds interesting. The thousand of correct lawsuits keep doctors from practicing sloppy medicine on my infant. They keep stores from selling crap that will choke a child. They bring justic to lazy landlords that treat poor tenants like animals. They make sure we don't buy things that were known to contain melamine and are sold anyway.

      --
      jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
  2. Presumably... by Gordonjcp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... they have a list of who bought which track. Wouldn't it be simpler to just send them non-DRMed copies of things they've already bought? At the very least, they could offer a discount for people re-buying tracks in a non-DRMed format.

    1. Re:Presumably... by Lord+Kano · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Even if walmart has to pay the record companies out of its own pocket, what's the break even point? You pay for a bunch of MP3s once or you pay to maintain servers forever. At some people, the MP3 option becomes cheaper.

      LK

      --
      "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
    2. Re:Presumably... by yincrash · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think walmart is gambling that before that point comes, people will have forgotten or given up on their DRMed music and they will be able to shut off their servers.

    3. Re:Presumably... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I guess you have to think about what portion of their market stops listening to music after a few months when it's no longer popular, and what portion continues to enjoy songs even after they've been off the radio for years.

  3. Feels like a Scooby-Doo ending. by Drakkenmensch · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Wal-Mart almost succeeding in robbing blind everyone who had purchased from their online store by making their MP3s unplayable, forcing them to pay for their music AGAIN. Now it took the effort of thousands of customers putting pressure on the stores, and they very nearly pulled it off. How long before other online music services decide to try something like this again, or simply go out of business and leave their customers in the cold?

    "I would have gotten away with it, if it wasn't for you meddling kids!"

    1. Re:Feels like a Scooby-Doo ending. by Jafafa+Hots · · Score: 4, Insightful
      All this means is that they will wait another year or maybe two before shutting down the DRM servers. They will in the end, there is no doubt.

      Do you seriously think the DRM servers will be running in 20 years? No way.

      --
      This space available.
    2. Re:Feels like a Scooby-Doo ending. by Guido+von+Guido · · Score: 4, Insightful

      All this means is that they will wait another year or maybe two before shutting down the DRM servers. They will in the end, there is no doubt.

      Do you seriously think the DRM servers will be running in 20 years? No way.

      While I'm in agreement, Walmart could certainly use that year or two in order to attempt to convince the labels to allow Walmart to remove the DRM from users' purchases. I think it'd be in their interest: they'd be able to shut down the DRM servers, they wouldn't take a big PR hit, and this episode would be much less likely to affect future music sales. Walmart is certainly willing to use their leverage to squeeze suppliers, and they probably have enough leverage with the labels to at least give it a try.

      Would they get anywhere? Hell if I know.

    3. Re:Feels like a Scooby-Doo ending. by Sancho · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The sooner they turn the servers off, the better. The public needs to learn that DRM means that they don't own copies of the media, despite what marketing would have them think.

    4. Re:Feels like a Scooby-Doo ending. by cptdondo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think there is a lesson in this to the companies that sell DRM crap that depends on servers. It's a one-time purchase with a recurring cost to the seller. Ultimately, DRM is a losing proposition to the retailer - if you run the DRM servers long enough, you *will* lose money.

      It's basically a ponzi scheme - to cover the cost of running the DRM servers, you have to keep finding new sales to prop up the running expenses on the old sales. Eventually you run out of new sales and you lose money.

      The incremental cost / track of running those servers is miniscule, but as old sales add up you still have to pay for bandwidth, iron, and power to service them.

      Seems that DRM based on servers is bad for retailers as well.

  4. Re:Feedback ... by wish+bot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They'll just quietly try it again in a year. Mark my words.

    --
    lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
  5. retarded walmart hate by timmarhy · · Score: 2, Insightful
    look at all the comments condemning walmart, even though this is the right thing to do. fuck, they listen to their customers and you still think they are evil?

    someone are just plains stupid i guess.

    --
    If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
    1. Re:retarded walmart hate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      someone are just plains stupid i guess.

      Indeed.

    2. Re:retarded walmart hate by LanMan04 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They should have done the right thing the first time, without getting yelled at. They got caught doing something stupid, and had to take their hand back out of the cookie jar. It would have been better if we didn't have to beat them into doing the right thing.

      --
      With the first link, the chain is forged.
  6. virtualization hole by mevets · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Apologies for marginally off topic, but couldn't I write an 'audio driver' for Xen, Bochs, .... which took the samples intended for the sound card and store them to a file; un-drming anything? Same for DVDs? Where does this stand with DMCA? I'm not reverse engineering anything....

  7. Now, if we can get off Windows by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Hopefully they can pull their web developers' collective head out of their collective ass and make a web store that works on something other than internet explorer and windows.

    Seriously, is this 1995 or something?

    --
    Do you have ESP?
  8. Whoops! by myxiplx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Now *this* is good news.

    Why? Because you can bet that Wallmart execs are not at all happy about having to pay for and run a bunch of servers that are no longer making them any money. You can bet that just opened their eyes to the downsides of DRM, and that some people at the top are now asking the music labels some tricky questions, namely "how long are we supposed to keep paying to run these damn things now?".

    Wallmart will not want to be left in this position again, and I can see this causing them to put some real pressure on the music labels to drop DRM.

    It also means that Wallmart, Apple and Amazon are all pushing for non DRM music. All together that's some pretty hefty leverage!

  9. Re:DMCA exemption by jank1887 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    how about "providing a tool to enable disabling of DRM when it has become obsolete"? IIRC, under the DMCA it's still technically never legal to distribute any tools that will accomplish this task.

  10. Re:"Feedback" as in ... by Hijacked+Public · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The discussion gets circular at some point, they are working for control because they think that will get them more money.

    A buzzphrase that may or may not still be vocalized by executives is 'data driven decisions'. In practice a good many decision are still made according to gut feelings, or very thin data, or totally invented data. In part this is because getting good data is hard to do and even harder to find clear meaning in.

    Here at Slashdot you have a demographic that should be more math oriented than most and yet you have people, this thread is a good example, writing about the financial and legal consequences of the Wal-Mart Corporation running or not running DRM servers. This is without a day's legal education in their lives and with no more financial experience than balancing their own checkbook. And with no clear actual numbers on which to base any of their conclusions.

    So just like the above Slashdotters, music execs went with their gut feelings. They expected digital formats to work like every other format in the entire history of their business model. I don't blame them. All of the non-DRM music stores coming online seems to suggest their minds are changing. If these stores make for the music industry I'm sure DRM for music will be mostly abandoned.

    --
    "Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
  11. Re:Feedback ... by somersault · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The good thing is that this will be a great example to smaller organisations (basically.. everyone) that DRM is a waste of money for the proprietors as well as a PITA for clients.

    --
    which is totally what she said
  12. Re:Heh.. by qoncept · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You're a genius. But do you think people in the military started paying $8 for a burrito after the change, or everyone else started paying $6? It didn't help anyone but the restaurant.

    Such is the human condition, I guess. People are more interested in dicking people over that are more fortunate than them than improving their own situation. Go to a bar with a shuffleboard table, and you'll see everyone is more interested in knocking the other guy's puck thing off than scoring points for himself.

    --
    Whale