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132 Comments
- illwil, on 04/23/2008, -4/+82Microsoft should just sell their DRM management rights for MSN Music to a third party. The complete disregard for the customers, even in this case, makes me think the RIAA is involved.
The music companies are surely threatened by the fact that consumers are potentially able to purchase their music 'once and for all'. With unhinged digital music (that consumers can transfer from device to device), the only reasons to re-purchase music is to get higher-quality/fidelity; formerly, music companies could count on impending format changes to make more money on their back catalog.
Now a company is simply abandoning their format, effectively limiting the life of the purchased music. Something isn't right. Why doesn't Microsoft look for a way to transfer the DRM administration rights to another company? - filefly, on 04/23/2008, -1/+65PlaysForNow (tm)
- Jerky1312, on 04/23/2008, -5/+63I don't feel bad for the customers who bought DRMed music. Everyone has been warning people to avoid DRMed audio/video from the get go, if you went and bought it anyway, you just learned yourself a tough lesson. The organizatoins selling digital goods with DRM are also learning a tough lesson, as I'm sure those people whose music stops working will be complaining about it to them.
- ISurfTooMuch, on 04/23/2008, -0/+47In a way, this is a good thing, assuming it gets the publicity it deserves. I'm not happy that the customers will likely get screwed, but this is a perfect example of why DRM is bad. In many cases, the process has been more or less invisible to the end user, but this event is going to slap a lot of people in the face. Sure, the number of people affected may not be that big, but it will likely start people asking whether the service they use employs DRM and whether a similar fate could befall them. After all, in the public's mind, MS is a huge company. If music purchased from MSN Music is at risk, music purchased anywhere else could be as well.
So I'll be passing this link on to some friends. Time to get them educated before they get schooled. - ISurfTooMuch, on 04/23/2008, -1/+41Well, first, MS can't sell these management rights. Well, they could try, but why would anyone in their right mind buy them? The best they could hope for is for someone to agree to manage these servers for an ongoing payment from MS. And why would MS want to do that? After all, the people who bought these tracks have already paid for them, so MS has its money. As far as the company is concerned, these people can go to hell, as evidenced by how they're treating them.
And I doubt the music industry is behind this. I don't say that because they are nice people (they are the scum of the Earth, IMHO), but this is publicity they surely don't need. If this continues to unfold, the headline that will be floating around the Internet will be "Microsoft, Music Industry Tell Consumers their Legally-Bought Music Will Disappear". Not only will this make pirated content even more attractive than it already is, but every time the entertainment companies start howling for more control over media distribution, someone will say, "How is this a good thing, when companies like Microsoft are, on a whim, intentionally rendering legally-purchased content useless?"
As an industry, you can't get worse publicity than this. Which is why we need to make sure that this news gets spread far and wide. I am in no way advocating piracy, but every time these goons demand more and more draconian laws, it needs to be pointed out that they're screwing the very people who are playing by their rules. - etherreal, on 04/23/2008, -3/+38Thank god my music is 100% DRM free. ***** THE RIAA.
- mlostracco, on 04/23/2008, -1/+32It's too bad Microsoft doesn't have much money or else they could just keep their license servers running!
What, exactly, is sooooo different about the DRM from the Zune Marketplace that makes it completely incompatible with the DRM from MSN Music, and why can't whatever differences are going on under the hood both be supported and backward-compatible? At the very least, all new DRM nonsense written and implemented by the SAME COMPANY should support past versions of it! And what happens when the current Zune Marketplace DRM becomes obsolete and Microsoft wants to go in yet another misguided direction?
New slogan: Plays For Sure, Not Forever. - aguita, on 04/23/2008, -0/+29This is one of the bes things to happen to DRM. What better way to prove that DRM is a faulty business model? Tell the people that bought the music with DRM that they can't use the music that they *bought* is no longer usable! Yet, the "pirates" have no problem using the music. It's almost as if Microsoft was trying to prove a point. Almost. :)
- inactive, on 04/23/2008, -0/+28Don't forget the fact that some people just don't know what the F is going on and need us to look out for them. Remember that recent story about Paypal finding that some people are still using IE 3.0? Anyway, companies pray off the uninformed, and it needs to stop.
- sysoprock, on 04/23/2008, -0/+26MSN might come and go but usenet lasts forever.
I glad this is happening actually, this is the first big "gotcha" that will wake people up to how piss poor this whole DRM sham really is. - thejwac, on 04/23/2008, -1/+26This is such a waste of money, effort, and time.
- WoollyMittens, on 04/23/2008, -1/+24So the honest customers are getting punished again? How fitting.
How did those DRM lobbyists ever manage to convince governments that they wouldn't be turning the authentication servers off after the purchases were made? I suppose that little possibility of injustice was easily overlooked for the right amount of donations. - Sendai129, on 04/23/2008, -6/+21ThePirateBay - 1
Microsoft - 0
My rationalizing of stealing music is that i have no problem paying 100$ to go see a GOOD band in concert. However there's no way I would (or even be able to) pay for my 10 000 songs in my music library. And yes, i have listened to most of them... it's a collection built over many years now. - goldfishey, on 04/23/2008, -2/+17oh, just strip the DRM off and quit complaining already! Although to be fair to people who blanch at (illegal?) DRM stripping - MSN should offer them DRM stripping of their purchased music - since they will no longer be maintaining the digital licenses.
- mrsteveman1, on 04/23/2008, -0/+15There isn't any difference, its arbitrary, MS wanted the zune to look more like the iPod with its own service. Can't have all those old nasty playsformaybe people coming in to screw up the Zune party.
- vyasram, on 04/23/2008, -7/+21DRM - EPIC FAIL
- vyasram, on 04/23/2008, -15/+28***** the RIAA
- illwil, on 04/23/2008, -0/+13Because the music companies have based their economies on people doing just that, but have neglected to change their business model in this latest format shift.
Here is how the record industry views it back catalog:
vinyl ($) -> 8-track ($) -> cassette ($) -> cd ($) -> digital file ($) -> Uh-Oh (...) - Gemfinder, on 04/23/2008, -0/+12Another reason I stuck with CDs.
- ArthurSucks, on 04/23/2008, -5/+17If Microsoft was smart they'd release a tool that permanently unlocks your WMA files.
- Gizza, on 04/23/2008, -2/+13You would think that at the very least they could release some kind of patch that removes the DRM from the files. Guess that's too much to ask though.
- WoollyMittens, on 04/23/2008, -2/+13No mate. Just re-download them from bittorrent in higher quality and order a band's tshirt every once in a while, like you should have done in the first place.
- WoollyMittens, on 04/23/2008, -0/+11Are you kidding? The RIAA would sue them for zillions and rip up those Zune contracts. The customer has already paid and signed away all their rights through the EULA, so why wouldn't you screw them?
- colincornaby, on 04/23/2008, -2/+12And people say Microsoft isn't evil... Wait till they shut down the Zune store and screw people who bought songs from the Zune store.
- mrsteveman1, on 04/23/2008, -0/+10Thats all true, but the core reason for THIS problem is because Microsoft decided to leave their own business behind and chase the iPod model, which required an artificial split to a new player and a new store, with an arbitrarily incompatible DRM scheme.
- mrsteveman1, on 04/23/2008, -1/+10The problem there is Microsoft has been ***** insane about protecting their DRM scheme, because they thought if they had the most locked down system they would win and crush apple. Hasn't happened of course, but thats the problem, they actually fix it quickly when its broken most of the time and they make it very difficult to crack.
- johnnyrotten, on 04/23/2008, -0/+9I think that what the author means is that if you save them to an audio CD, which converts the data from WMA to 44/16/stereo PCM, and then rip the CD to MP3 files, that is a lossy solution. If you rip them using a lossless encoding (such as 44/16/stereo PCM or FLAC), you won't suffer any additional loss, but that kind of limits where you can play them. I think this will be less of a problem in the future, with cheap memory and hard drives growing in size. It's gotten to the point where you can store large music collections in lossless encodings pretty cheaply.
BTW, .wav is simply a tagged file format. A .wav file can contain mp3 or other sound encodings that aren't the same quality as CD audio. - Richardgm, on 04/23/2008, -0/+8sucks to be them
- Jerky1312, on 04/23/2008, -0/+8Maybe the 2nd biggest incident, as last year Google's video store was terminated, rendering videos bought from the service useless...
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070812-goog ... - neko, on 04/23/2008, -0/+8PlaysForSure.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA - inactive, on 04/23/2008, -0/+7DRM is basically a rental for an indetermine period of time to be solely determined by the person issuing the license. Just ask the suckers that bought classic baseball games from MLB.COM and can't use them now because MLB changed its mind and revoked the licenses.
- EarendilStar, on 04/23/2008, -1/+8While I do think it's a negative thing for DRM, which is a positive ting for the consumer, I still don't like Microsoft for this move.
Keeping an authentication server up costs *nothing*, For Microsoft to keep such a server up wouldn't even be noticed. Why take it down when you are pissing off costumers? Bad move Microsoft. Even game companies keep their servers online way after the games are being bought, why? Because people still play them, and servers of this nature are cheap. - 4tygames, on 04/23/2008, -0/+7Why can't Microsoft just provide a DRM-unlock program for the people that bought from MSN music? It really should not be that hard.
If you have any MSN Music files and you want them unlocked (legally, played through your sound card) try Protected Music Converter, Sound Taxi, or Tunebite. - solid12345, on 04/23/2008, -0/+7I live in middle America, no good bands come to play where I live, so how am I supposed to support the bands I like other than buying their music?
- inactive, on 04/23/2008, -0/+6It's called FairUse4WM, but it's not issued by Microsoft. ;)
FairUse4WM 1.3 (Freeware/Windows)
Freeware DRM removal Windows software. Strip copy-protection from .WMV, .ASF, .WMA (Windows Media Player 9, 10, 11)
Can't transfer legally purchased music and videos to your iPod, Sony PSP because of the DRM protection of Windows Media files? Here comes free software for Windows called FairUse4WM.
FairUse4WM can't crack DRM license. You must have VALID license files on your harddrive and be able to play the DRM protected files without restrictions. FairUse4WM is intended to be used to make fair-use backups only. Please do not abuse this rule.
FairUse4WM is a GUI version of drmdbg (DRM removal tool). drmdbg doesn't convert your original Windows Media audio and video files, it just removes DRM header of the media file, so you get lossless conversion of DRM protected media files.
FairUse4WM supports Windows Media Player 9, 10, 11 (individualization version up to .3930). - mybeat, on 04/23/2008, -1/+7ha ha.sucks for them
I actually bought 1 song just to see how will things work. Spend 5 mins while buying, The downloading mechanism on their site didn't work with opera, not a big problem, downloaded it with IE,that's another 5 mins.And the song had DRM,sweet, because I've never dealt with drm before.
So none of the players that i use to listen to music didn't work, well that's started to piss me off.Launched media player and still couldn't listen to the ***** song until some license crap had to be downloaded, another 5 mins.
After that i was like ***** this *****,never will i buy any of the drm crap again, NEVER.
I went to the bay and downloaded the same song in flac without the *****, in less than 2 mins. - solid12345, on 04/23/2008, -2/+8I have purchased my music "once and for all", they are called compact discs which I can play in a stereo and rip them to mp3 at my leisure.
Problem is most people pirate because they want free music, or have a spur-of-the-moment hankering to hear some random band they don't own an album of.
I'm still not buying into the iTunes thing, if anything selling digital content online only encourages me to go piracy because why should I bother with setting up my credit card number and an account just to buy a few songs online. I'd rather just browse the racks at Best Buy for something I like. - inactive, on 04/23/2008, -3/+9Well i feel bad for all the n00bs that bought music from microsoft!
- Slovenian6474, on 04/23/2008, -0/+6It would be theft for someone to take my CD away. Somehow, downloading a copy of a song without paying is "theft" according to the RIAA, but shutting off the ability to play a purchased song is not.
- Amric, on 04/23/2008, -0/+6This is why you never ever EVER buy DRM "protected" music... bah DRM infested is more like it.
- rdas7, on 04/23/2008, -0/+6wow, what a simple straightforward solution. thanks for the tip.
- pigfister, on 04/23/2008, -0/+5DRM = The ability to resell you content over and over again, a licence to print money! Or the ability to fix prices globally using region coding. Blu-RAy BD+ the most anti consumer DRM ever!
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_c ...
FTA: This is by design: as Jack Valenti, former head of the MPAA, put it, “If you buy a DVD you have a copy. If you want a backup copy you buy another one”). It's obvious why this type of business model makes the pain of pushing content protection onto consumers so worthwhile, since it practically constitutes a license to print money.
The BPI Are: SONY, UNIVERSAL, WARNER GROUP, EMI.
The RIAA Soundexchange Are: SONY, UNIVERSAL, WARNER GROUP, EMI.
The IFPI Are: The same anti consumer lot as listed above!
The MPAA Are: SONY, UNIVERSAL, WARNER GROUP, DISNEY, PARAMOUNT, FOX. - goldfishey, on 04/23/2008, -0/+5I buy mine on cd's too (although I usually wait for them to show up at the dirtcheap stores) my tendency to accidentally delete files makes having a nice hard copy vital.
- localzuk, on 04/23/2008, -0/+5Huh? I don't think the person was trying to say that you owned the songs. They are saying you own the disc and therefore have the rights and ability to listen to and play to the music contained on it *forever*.
- harlowsmonkeys, on 04/23/2008, -0/+5"Why can't Microsoft just provide a DRM-unlock program for the people that bought from MSN music? It really should not be that hard"
It's not very likely that they could get permission to do that. - inactive, on 04/23/2008, -0/+5Now THIS is the point that the class action should pursue.
Well played sir. - upfrontfanatic, on 04/23/2008, -1/+6People who bought DRMed goods implicitly told the industry "These are goods we want", and hence helped drive the adaptation of DRM. They were the ones who made DRM a "industry standard".
I have NO sympathy for these people what so ever. I hope they lose all their purchased music and have to repay to get it once again. - niczar, on 04/23/2008, -0/+5You're right, I don't feel bad either, but they will feel bad hopefully, against MS, and will never buy their products again.
I see this as the perfect advertisement against DRM. -
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