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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."

4 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 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
  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.

  3. 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!