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Walmart Caves On DRM Removal
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."
Only did this so that people wouldn't sue them.
... 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.
Do you seriously think the DRM servers will be running in 20 years? No way.
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Well, it does. Play a DRMed file. Listen to the quality.
Turn off the DRM servers, transfer the file to another machine and listen to it again.
Listen to the windows error message sound.
Which sounds better?
Wouldn't "Disabling a DRM format that is obsolete" be a good candidate to add to the DMCA exemptions?
For consumers, living in constant doubt of their content. For providers, servers that they will have to run, like, forever. And the admins who maintain them.
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
You're missing the point.
They might not want DRM, but they do want their previous purchased music to not suddenly become worthless.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
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.
They'll just quietly try it again in a year. Mark my words.
lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
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!
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