DRM's final insult
DRM is dead. And just like every activist, pirate and skeptic ever warned you, all the DRM-laden songs you bought will join it in the grave. Cory over at the motherboing notes that Microsoft is to close its "license server" for good, making it so DRM tracks are useless on any computer other than the one they were originally downloaded to.
They're nuking customers' music collections from orbit, an expression of spite on a cosmic scale. It's unimaginably bad form, but you know what? If you're affected by this, you're getting exactly what you paid for.
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"Microsoft is to close its "license server" for good, making it so DRM tracks are useless on any computer other than the one they were originally downloaded to."
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for DRM-free music and all that jazz. But this is just wrong. Its alarmist and overly broad-sounding to try and make a point.
The fact is that the DRM servers for MSN Music are the ones going down, and they haven't sold anything since 11/06: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Music
It's alarmist and smugly schadenfreudian, sure. But it's not *wrong*. You even point out the exact set of customers to be thusly buggerized!
"Its alarmist and overly broad-sounding to try and make a point."
What? Boing Boing being alarmist about DRM? No! ;-)
"Its alarmist and overly broad-sounding to try and make a point."
What? Boing Boing being alarmist about DRM? No! ;-)
I still listen to VDs that I bought twenty years ago; If I bought music from Microsoft I would expect it to last longer than 18 months.
It's time for a class action suit.
Or perhaps an open-source DRM remover.
Hopefully this will wake up a few people that just did not understand why some of us did not like DRM from the begining. Seems like the reason DRM was actualy adopted by anyone was ignorance, they just did not understand what could happen, and why it was bad... At least now a few people will get to see first hand why DRM is bad, and will become more vocal about other services that still use it. Your average citizen is more likly to listen to another average citizen than a geek too... Hopefully microsoft has dealth the death blow to DRM with this, at the cost of a few people's music collection...
This is all Cory's fault.
Rob Beschizza being hysteric like Cory? Say it aint so! Same as Edison cylinders, dictaphone wires, DCC or 8 track tapes, formats come and go. Unfortunately whinging wise asses seem to be a constant.
"Edison cylinders, dictaphone wires, DCC or 8 track tapes"
You forgot vinyl. Or is that because it's a format that's still readable? I can still play my mono records on my stereo equipment 70 years later. The fact that the record label, or the shellac record industry, doesn't exist anymore is not a hindrance. And it shouldn't be.
I deliberately did not include vinyl records or shellac disks since the equipment to play them is still being produced and sold.
Someone may still have functional equipment to playback recordings in the other formats I mentioned, the original recordings may even be in playable condition such that archival copies could be made.
For these MS music files its not that hard to make archival copies at all, the same equipment that plays them today can make the archives. My implication is that the correct way to view this is that formats come and go, no more, no less.
@10 But this has nothing to do with formats 'coming and going', the format's going to carry on, it's just peoples ability to play the songs will cease.
What do you mean by archival copies? Dumping you tunes to CD? Ripping them to drm-free mp3? Either time-consuming or, technically, illegal.
I'm not going to get too annoyed over this, I'm sure there's a clause in the eula that sez they can discontinue the service at anytime, so, y'know, if you agree to their terms you can't really moan later...