medialoper.com — Yesterday Microsoft revealed that Zune's highly touted wireless file sharing will infect otherwise unprotected audio files with proprietary DRM. If users are sharing songs that are covered by a Creative Commons license, this would be a clear violation of that license.
Sep 15, 2006 View in Crawl 4
whiteravenSep 16, 2006
Some people are in desperate need of some perspective. This DRM scheme is a harmless bit of CYA. This wireless sharing is not meant to be your primary source of content. IF someone shares some media with you and it's legal and you really want to keep it, all you have to do is take some time to get it a more traditional way. E-mail the file or go download it from the original source or whatever. This system is actually great for exposing your friends to new and unknown artists or sharing podcasts that you're not likely to want to listen to more than once. It's an extended demo, not a major source of content.This wireless sharing will be used in casual situations. If you need something more permanent, just get the file a different way.
whiteravenSep 16, 2006
You are wrong. It is the *end user* that is responsible for sticking to the CC license, not Microsoft. As with a tape recorder, as long as there is a significant legal use for the product, Microsoft has nothing to worry about from a challenge on CC grounds. Since most media does not fall under CC, Microsoft can't be held responsible for what end-users may do. Microsoft is further protected by the fact that the original file remains un-altered and can be transferred through other means.Microsoft can not be accused of locking up CC content... only an end-user could possibly be responsible for that. And of course, who is going to go after end-users? They are just using a handy method of transfer that has these limitations on it. If they want to make a point of giving someone an unfettered copy, there are many other methods available to them... and not as some kind of work-around but simply by using the same methods that are available to them right now.
masterrSep 16, 2006
<a class="user" href="http://www.zuneinsider.com/2006/09/answers_to_some.html">http://www.zuneinsider.com/2006/09/answers_to_some.html</a>Edit: So you saw it already. Nevermind then. :-P
toosdaySep 16, 2006
The problem is this: If MS watched what you are doing on your Zune and phoned home every time you shared a song, then hell would break loose among the community. They decided not to do that... so hell's breaking loose anyhow.No matter what, it seems they're going to be blasted for whatever they do.
fredsanfordSep 16, 2006Submitter
Your argument might be convincing if there weren't so many other ways for CC licensed content to be spread without the limitations imposed by Zune.As for your description of the content being buffered, etc. You can frame the technology any way you please, but if the user who receives the shared content walks away with a playable media file then a copy has been made. BTW, what the heck is a "shadow" of a song? It either is the song or it isn't the song.You seem to know a lot about the specifics of Zune's inner workings considering so little hard technical data has been revealed to this point.
theovermanSep 17, 2006
@FredSanford3Thanks for the compliment! (at least I considered as such) That's not "knowing", as much as I'd like that. That's called "stop to think before jumping to conclusions", with a bit of software knowledge basics backing the logic. (Thinking before talking, btw, doesn't seem to be the rule sometimes in public forums. Not the case on this one, though, which has been quite interesting to follow.)One thing I know, though, is about content streaming. The "shadow" of the song in my point of view is akin to the buffer of streamed data to your computer. Did you know that when your player (whatever it is) says: "buffering" it's actually copying the file physically to your computer? And, guess what, although it's there, there's a mechanism in the player that prevents you from actually playing that again as an ordinary file, although, in reality, it is. I never saw anyone complaining about it before. Maybe people recognize the benefits in the existence of the whole concept of streaming content (or maybe now they will complain because sometimes folks are more interested in "winning their arguments" than in the outcome that helps the most people).So, going back to your message, "walking away with a playable content" is akin of being able to keep on playing your streamed video even if your network fluctuates. (if you have a laptop, you can literally walk away. hehehe). The only thing here is that, to allow the benefits that the 3x3 mechanism is targeting, the fluctuation is more like 3 days disconnected from the source of the content :-) We all know that the way they implemented the 3x3 is by enveloping the content in DRM, thanks to ZuneInsider comments in his blog. Still, as I said, the method of implementing the sharing channel is irrelevant. What is important is that it needs to exist to allow for the sharing experience, the same way it's important that the buffer file exists in your PC/Mac temp folder for the streaming to exist.And exactly because there are so many ways of sharing CC content via other means I fail to see the outcry on the limitations applied on this particular new channel. The benefits here far outweight the limitations in my opinion.Between "it could have" and "it should have" I choose the "It has".
theovermanSep 17, 2006
Oh, I just thought about one interesting question regarding CC: Let's suppose, theoretically, that a photographer used CC for a photo it just published.Bob is a photo enthusiast. He saw the photo book in his friend's house and though: "hey, that's a nice photo! I want it forever!". He decided then to use his polaroid camera to take a copy of the original photo (quite old school this Bob) and hung it in his room. Problem is: Bob used the polaroid paper used for low quality test shots and his copy of the photo lasted only 3 days (making the time up just for easing up the paralel), fading away after that... Poor Bob. Now he'll have to figure out another way of getting that photo again.Can Polaroid be sued because the photo paper it provided didn't support the CC premise that if Bob took a copy of the content he could keep it forever?(For those not too into paraboles: Can Zune be blamed for providing a way of sampling musical content and having people misinterpreting it as an ordinary transfer mechanism?)
thedrunkmonkeySep 19, 2006
"You've obviously never been to university. It'd be a god-send to be able to share a lecture with other people. However we can be pretty certain that the limitation will extend to copying files to your home computer as well so taking notes would be tricky."Actually, I am at one now. Unless people are recording the lectures on some handheld recorder, it is not hard to get the lecture. My university provides recordings of many lectures online for download and I know it is that way at MANY universities.If you want to take notes just go to the damn class.It seems like you are just grasping at straws trying to come up with reasons to hate the Zune.