MSN Music DRM Servers Going Dark In September 543
PDQ Back writes to tell us about an email Microsoft sent to former customers of MSN Music today. The company said it would be turning off the DRM servers used to authorize playback of music purchased from the now-defunct MSN Music store. "'As of August 31, 2008, we will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers,' reads the e-mail. This doesn't just apply to the five different computers that PlaysForSure allows users to authorize, it also applies to operating systems on the same machine (users need to reauthorize a machine after they upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista, for example). Once September rolls around, users are committed to whatever five machines they may have authorized — along with whatever OS they are running."
DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Brilliant (Score:5, Insightful)
At last Microsoft makes the case AGAINST DRM.
Thank you gentlemen.
Within terms of agreement? (Score:5, Insightful)
And if so, does this show that the product, even as initially sold, was defective, unfit for purpose, or deceptively advertised?
iTunes (Score:5, Insightful)
Never forget that DRM means you are dependent on a company
Which is why I buy from Amazon (or if the band's site supports/suggest another) non-DRM MP3 format.
Please do not respond with "which is why I buy all my songs for $0.00 from a site called Bittorrent posts." I do tire of those
Ob "Thank you, Microsoft!" (Score:5, Insightful)
don't worry... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sucks to be you (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Brilliant (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, my CD still works... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Did Anyone Else See This Coming? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is a pretty good point, actually. I guess it proves that being successful is something you have to work every minute of every day at. Just because something good happened to you yesterday and now you have a lot of $$$ in the bank doesn't make it any easier to be successful at something else tomorrow.
In Microsoft's case, they obviously did something right to get most of the PC's in the world running their OS. But they've had some pretty big flops over the last few years. Proof that pumping money into something isn't enough.
Re:Within terms of agreement? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not being able to get to the media is different from not being able to use the media if it's accessible.
Re:DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft. (Score:1, Insightful)
ONLY GOOD THINGS COME OUT OF IT!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Know why? There are people that don't realise how bad are DRM downloads until they get royally fucked in the ass and this is what's going to happen on sept 1 2008.
Nothing educates more than a bad experience.
Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike DRMed music, it's not a federal offense for someone service your minivan when it breaks.
Re:Awesome! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft. (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this any different than, say, Ford discontinuing its Aerostar minivan line?
Did Ford engineer the Aerostar specifically so that, if they ever discontinued the line, you'd immediately be unable to change the oil or refill the gas tank?
It's one thing if a product happens to have necessary limits. It's another thing for the product to be purposefully and artificially crippled so that it will not function as expected.
Re:Within terms of agreement? (Score:3, Insightful)
That clause should go over well. "We reserve the right to deny you use of what you paid for whenever and however we wish."
They are so quick to apply property metaphors to data (copying as "theft", intellectual works as "intellectual property", finite distribution of an infinite object, etc.). Why aren't they applying it here? How would you feel if your toaster disappeared because Sunbeam decided not to make toasters anymore? Furthermore, how would you feel if a little card came with your toaster saying that might happen?
Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft. (Score:5, Insightful)
While you may think that's a ridiculous car analogy, it's not that far from reality. My parents' Saturn car, for example, has a special chip in the key to deactivate the anti-theft immobilizer. Even if you get another key cut at a locksmith, the key will open the door but will not start the car. So you have to spend $25 to get a new key cut by the dealership. If Saturn went under and you lost your key, you could no longer use your car. You can't even hotwire it easily, cus that's the whole point of the immobilizer in the first place.
Except that in this case it would be perfectly legal to get a mechanic to go and rip out the immobilizer circuit, whereas it's against the DCMA to strip the DRM from your WMA files. Then again, who cares about the legality, you can download a stripper to remove DRM from WMA files. It only works if you have the key in your "keyring", so people with MSN Music would have to strip it before changing OS or reinstalling their OS.
Re:DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM isn't a problem if your a pirate. It is only a problem if you are customer.
Re:suppositories (Score:5, Insightful)
Just wait until MS decides to turn off the server farm that enables XP installations; that'll put the music in perspective.
Can't say they should be surprised -- after all, they knowingly depend upon a product with fatal, vendor controlled DRM on it. That's playing with fire in any sensible person's book. The question is: Will MS's victims (excuse me, I should probably call them consenting masochistic partners) learn from this? Or will they continue to buy products booby trapped with fatal DRM?
I guess we already know the answer, anyway. It's that darned Gaussian come back to haunt us again.
Perfect Example why DRM sucks... HOWEVER. (Score:5, Insightful)
Like it or not, companies love this because by licensing you products, they can terminate the license at anytime and force you to buy it again.
DRM sucks.
Re:DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a thought: class action lawsuit naming both Microsoft and the record labels as codefendants. Demand that they make available DRM-free copies of all music that has been legally purchased or at a minimum provide free copies based on a more up-to-date DRM mechanism. It's time to force the industry to pay the true cost of DRM: maintaining support for it forever.
Once that is over, we should push for a law that requires all DRM-laden music sellers to be bonded for enough money to cover the cost of maintaining the DRM scheme indefinitely (that is, operating off of only a portion of the interest earned on the principal).
Re:Why is this news? Because it's Microsoft. (Score:3, Insightful)
If they were simply renting the music on a pay-for-play basis it would be different, of course, like renting a DVD from Blockbuster. But that's not the way that music was offered. Those customers bought those tracks, or thought they did.
Re:even for M$. (Score:5, Insightful)
How much money are they losing on this idiocy?
Re:DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
And not just any kind of evil... but EEEEEVVEEEEELLL.. kind of evil.
Well, all I can say is simple. Expect that sooner or later, people are going to get a MAJOR shaft in the arse for locking themselves into servitude to any particular big shop. It is to be expected.
Re:even for M$. (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad more people don't have more music like this. The bigger and badder the burn. The sooner people will be in the know and avoid DRM. All music with DRM is a rental. And someday the rental office will close down. So even if you want to pay rent, there will be no one to take it.
Congress will either mandate that Apple keeps their servers going...or the Federal Government will take over the job.
Re:DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of these online stores, even the stores with DRM, tell you you're "buying" the album or track. You know, like before you actually pay money, you click on some sort of button that often says something like "buy this album". It doesn't say "rent" or "license".
Now there may well be something buried in the license agreement when you sign up for the store that says, "you aren't actually buying anything, you're just licensing the right listen them, and we can revoke that right whenever we want." Still, the way the stores are representing the transaction as "buying" the album, and that's the way consumers understand the transaction.
If there isn't any legal consequence for the owners of online "stores" for this sort of misrepresentation, there should be.
Re:even for M$. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Within terms of agreement? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:suppositories (Score:3, Insightful)
Just wait until MS decides to turn off the server farm that enables XP installations; that'll put the music in perspective.
At least Windows XP has the corporate version that allows you to install it without activation. Worse yet is Vista, where even the corporate version requires activation. Also, at the current rate of Vista adoption, they might stop supporting Vista before they stop supporting XP.
Re:DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
Unlikely. (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately just about anyone "legally purchasing" music has signed a license agreement with the service. Since they are legally purchasing a license to use the sound recording for personal use - a rather restrictive license, at that - they really got what was coming to them.
I doubt that the courts would be an effective place to take this up. The market has already started to push producers towards offering their music through DRM-free avenues. (iTunes Plus, Amazon MP3, eMusic, Magnatune)
If enough users get screwed like this with closing DRMed stores, DRM will come crashing down.
(side note: I'm in a band that chose to only make its music available through DRM-free stores. We don't like letting retailers screw our fans. Check it out [amazon.com].
2014 isn't that far away (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a machine in service with an embedded computer in it. The software for programming the computer does not support subdirectories. It dates from MS-DOS 1.1 from 25 years ago. It sort of works with MS-DOS 3.2 from 22 years ago.
Windows XP will still be in use after 2014. Not every piece of technology is easy to update.
Re:Unlock the DRM (Score:2, Insightful)
After all, that's the whole reason the DRM is on there in the first place. Do you really think MS would choose to waste resources designing, implmenting and supporting a DRM service? Of course not, they do that specifically to make it attractive to the record companies to get MS to sell their music. They enter a contract which basically says "we grant MS the ability to sell our music, provided it is secured with DRM".
That's why MS have DRM and that's why they can't just take it off even if they wanted to (which they probably do). They would need the blessing of the copyright owners to do so, for every individual track.
Re:Internet Archive. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, I forgot the logic behind this, but I'm sure someone will chime in.
Re:DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
I, along with many others, have been saying this same statement for years. Nobody actually "owns" their music. They own certain contractual rights to music owned by other people, also referred to as an intellectual property license.
The comment itself, is neither supporting the music industry or the consumers. It is a simple statement of fact. Four words no less, which are actually insightful, if anything at all. I personally, have always said there is a problem with the consumer's understanding of exactly what it is they are purchasing.
Till MP3 really started to take off, as well as the Internet, a physical CD was the predominant medium that you kept music on. It was not till after 2000, at least, that making 1:1 copies of any CD was viable economically. This was a concern for various industries, since there was no degradation in quality, as was inherent to the process of duplicating analogue mediums.
Now that the Internet has become so ubiquitous, it is a truly trivial matter to transfer around very large amounts of digital media, a large part of it in MP3 format. Physical mediums are disappearing incredibly fast. MP3 players have replaced them as the predominant storage medium, and it is interesting to note that the media player and storage medium have combined into a single device.
So although the playing field has changed dramatically, the consumer has remained ignorant. The average consumer has always construed that their physical ownership of a piece of plastic effectively gave them actual ownership of a piece of music. This was never true from day one. It is not the consumer's fault either. The music industry was never very interested in explaining the purchased license rights to the consumer. From the consumer's point of view, they gave somebody money in return for being able to listen to a piece of music FOREVER. Whether or not you agree with that statement is 100% irrelevant. I have met maybe 1 or 2 people out of ONE HUNDRED that actually had a more sophisticated understanding of intellectual property rights and license agreements. Want to guess how many were lawyers? So to discuss this, you have to be considering the understanding of the average person, the lowest common denominator. In this case, the lowest common denominator still thinks they "own" music. Not just their lifetime either. My own father believed that a CD, if properly taken care of, could be passed down from generation to generation. He must own 5,000 of them. Being an intelligent man, he reasoned that in a decade or two it would be very easy to maintain and backup his entire library of music and transfer it to a different medium. He did not expect that legal counsel for Sony would openly call him a criminal and a thief for daring to maintain his investment.
Which brings us to a more nefarious motivation, which was that the consumer would have to purchase copies over and over when the physical medium itself failed. Once again, this situation was created out of the consumer's ignorance. Where was the copy of the license agreement? Where was the fine print? Where was anything that ever described the rights of a consumer with their music in layman's terms?
The music industry as a whole is getting their "just desserts". Maybe they could not have seen the future, but they are more responsible than the consumer for perpetuating this nebulous cloud that is the ownership and the licensing rights of music.
When it comes to DRM'd Music, there may well be wholly different contracts that were signed between the content providers and the consumer. I would expect that to be so, even though I do not know directly. I was never naive enough to sign one of those contracts and buy that crap. I don't say that to insult anyone who did either. I doubt that they read those agreements either, and reasonably expected to be able to listen to their music forever too.
So I hate to say I told you so to a bunch of people, but that wa
Re:2014 isn't that far away (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
"But, this reduces audio quality!" you say? I figure if you were that concerned about audio quality, you wouldn't be buying compressed music from MSN, iTunes, etc.
Also, what the fuck? You find it reasonable to dig out a CD(-R, erase), burn, rip, encode, and tag every album or track you buy? Especially when you're already paying most of the price of a physical copy? Excuse me if I find that a completely idiotic suggestion; I buy music online because it's convenient and fast, this oft brought up suggestion makes it neither.
Re:Is there any chance? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a better solution that is working just fine. Boycott DRM. If it fails in the marketplace, it will go away. We have a vote. It's the dollar. Vote wisely and often.
I have no PC at home using WGA. Sometimes you get outvoted for the mainstream product, but you don't have to buy it.
Re:DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
And now, I fear that Google is doing the same.
Re:DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
I, along with many others, have been saying this same statement for years. Nobody actually "owns" their music. They own certain contractual rights to music owned by other people, also referred to as an intellectual property license.
Except, of course, that that isn't true either.
Nobody owns music, because music is not property. You can own a copy of some music, stored in some physical form. The law reserves the right to make certain uses of that copy to certain people, for example, via the copyright in the piece and in any particular performance of it. But the record industry or copyright holder no more own music I've paid for than I do, because music in intangible and not subject to ownership.
Now, if the record industry have taken someone's money in return for giving them a copy of some music, and then subsequently undermine the consumer's ability to enjoy that music in an expected way, then that is changing the rules. If the original contract, implied or otherwise, granted the rights to enjoy the music in normal fashion, then taking away this facility is breaking the contract and I don't see why whoever took the money shouldn't be liable for part of the cost representing the value lost. If the original contract contained some lawyerly weasel words about this possibility, then I think there is a decent ethical (and possibly legal too) argument that such terms would not normally be expected by someone buying their copy of the music and the one-sided contract terms should be invalidated.
This is simple contract law and ethics, and DRM and the technical means involved don't really matter other than as the means to the end. As with all technology, DRM in itself is ethically neutral; it's how it's used that is ethical or evil. In this case, for example, there would be no problem now if upon selling the DRM'd copies of the music to customers, the provider had also been compelled to lodge a DRM-free version in escrow, to be released in circumstances such as this so that customers did not lose out. It's the way that no such arrangement appears to be in place here and the law seems to do nothing to protect the consumer at this point that makes the situation unjust, not the DRM.
Re:DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if they're doing this on purpose to scare people away from paying once; to later introduce a subscription music service. Instead of buy once, play forever; buy forever, and play as long as you pay.
It would be very sly of them to scare people away from "buying once" into "paying continually, and if they decide to pull the product, well who cares, you're not paying anymore then after all". I'd have to say this shows incredible foresight if this is what they're aiming for; doing this to leave a sour taste in people's mouth with Buy Once software schemes; aiming for a more tame response to a subscription only Windows7. People would think "well what if they pull the activation servers on Windows Vista like they did the music? Maybe I DO want a subscription service..."
I once thought MS was stupid. Now, they may be more ingenious* than I ever imagined.
*It's probably just some Exec deciding they're not making enough money.
Time for a simple, new law. (Score:2, Insightful)
a) isn't advertised as limited in any context of time of ownership (i.e. a lease or a rental), and
b) choose to discontinue any services necessary to preserve a consumer's rightful access to said product, YOU MUST UNLOCK IT UNDER CONSIDERABLE PENALTY OF LAW.
If a company folds without fulfilling this obligation, the necessary assets (including the DRM code) are seized to allow for the successful discharging of this responsibility, with priority over any other creditor.
Re:DRM (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is MS marketing really that stupid? (Score:3, Insightful)
No it isn't.
News/Media companies are going to be very quiet on this.
A cookie for you if you can figure out why
Re:DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really, the copyright holder has the copyright to the music. You can't own the intangible "music". POssibly you can say they own the copyright to the music if you like to have an "own" in there. Holdung the copyright to something is NOT the same as owning it, not even close. It envolves quite different rights and restrictions.
So, "You own a copy of the music, the copyright holder owns a copyright to the music".
Re:DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
This is false. You own the media and the contents on that media. Copyright is merely a legal burden on the right to copy those contents; it doesn't change your actual ownership.
The most obvious way to demonstrate this is to consider the border condition when copyright on a CD you own expires. There is no change in ownership, there is no eminent domain done on someone elses property, there is no termination of a contract. Yet suddenly you can do exactly anything and everything you want with your property, including selling copies, charging for plays of it, etc.
Re:2014 isn't that far away (Score:2, Insightful)
Same here... Except it wasn't my boss but my father in law. Exactly the same situation: an old PC controlled a lathe in his company and it broke down. I gave him an old P166 with ISA slots that I had lying around.
The company who made the lathe was out of business. Could be the same... Was it called "MASTEN" or something like that?