Wal-Mart Ends DRM Support 231
An anonymous reader writes "So, you thought you did well to support the fledgling music industry by purchasing your tracks legally from the Wal-Mart store? Well, forget about moving these tracks to a new PC! Since they started selling DRM-free tracks last year, there's no money to be made in maintaining the DRM support systems, and in fact, support is being shut down. Make sure you circumvent the restrictions by burning the tracks to an old-fashioned CD before Wal-mart 'will no longer be able to assist with digital rights management issues for protected WMA files purchased from Walmart.com.' Support ends October 9th."
A change. (Score:5, Insightful)
An interesting change in the wind. Suddenly, DRM is not just bad for consumers but good for re-sellers, where the cost of pissing off your clientele has to be weighed vs the cost of producing DRM-laden product, but aside from being utterly useless it actually harms the company directly by costing it money.
This is something that companies will listen to- and quickly. I suspect that this begins the downward spiral of heavy-handed DRM.
At least, I hope so...
Re:refund (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DRM is dead (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see iTunes and FairPlay going anywhere anytime soon. Hell, even after their spat earlier in the year when NBC moved to Amazon after Apple said no to their pricing scheme is now back on iTunes. But then again, I've said Apple got it right years ago. Offers some kind of production the media companies want, yet once I download it, I am free do whatever I want, like burning to CD's, installing and playing on a number of PC's/MP3 players, etc. without a lot of hassles. In the end, consumers don't mind DRM so long as it is reasonable.
Obtrusive Draconian DRM designed to make you pay for every device you want to listen on, etc.. Yeah, that idea is pretty much dead.
Re:HAHAHA tag? (Score:4, Insightful)
People are STILL buying DRM tracks?? At this point I don't blame the retailers, but the consumer. Amazon has been selling DRM free tracks for a long time now, and they're usually cheaper to boot!
Re:Almost had to re-buy all of their music... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:refund (Score:5, Insightful)
So the moral of the story is that if you are willing to commit fraud you can get free cereal.
Vote of no confidence (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM cannot be trusted. DRM retailers cannot be trusted to keep up the support. This is why people should never buy DRM.
Why not replace the DRM'ed songs with non-DRM'ed? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, wait....the RIAA won't get to double-dip customers if that happens. Now I see.
Re:refund (Score:5, Insightful)
They can demand all they want. Doesn't mean they will get it.
You ignored my question in favor of going on a rant.
Obviously, they have the right to say what they want. I was asking if their demands are supported by law. Perhaps under an implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for purpose. Also, the TOS could have terms relating directly to the shutdown of the service.
Re:Unexpected (Score:4, Insightful)
The WMA DRM protection system can explicitly allow or disallow users to burn CD audio from the encrypted files. It's not necessarily using the analog output, which would obviously have to be redigitized, resulting in further quality loss.
Also, they can't really stop the "analog hole" until they implant DRM-laden microchips in our ears, and forcibly encode all the world's audio sources. Or ban all consumer microphones and recording devices.
Two Words: (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:HAHAHA tag? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone with ideas on how to educate the general population [on DRM]?
Shut down the Wal-Mart DRM servers.
Re:refund (Score:5, Insightful)
Have to agree with this.
Walmart has very customer friendly return policies in their bricks-and-mortar stores.
The stores are pits, and the actual customer service sucks (I've stood at the pickup desk for a half hour just waiting for someone to show up and get my web order) but when you need to return something, they're very, very good about it.
Got some ugly crap for Christmas from your mother who, somehow, doesn't understand the concept of "gift receipts" and just says "if you don't like it, I got it at...." instead like it's still 1982?
If they can scan that particular piece of ugly crap and identify it as something they might have sold her, they'll give you back the current sale price on a gift card, so you can go buy juice and cereal. No hassles.
Target, on the other hand, are a bunch of bastards with crazy rules like "we'll take it, but you have to find something else to buy from the same department."
Re:HAHAHA tag? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:refund (Score:3, Insightful)
He did answer it really. You can ask all you want but you can be damm sure that the walmart lawyers have already thought of this.
In a license or eula SOMEWHERE is a clause that lets wallyworld get away with this without giving refunds.
Really. one of the worlds biggest corporations vs. a bunch of suckers who downloaded DRM music. Who do you really think is going to get the short end of the stick? I mean really...
Re:HAHAHA tag? (Score:3, Insightful)
Punishing the customer won't stop the criminals, never will.
That should read "Punishing the customer will increase the criminals' numbers, always will."
support isn't free (Score:5, Insightful)
something people are missing here (Score:4, Insightful)
Wal-Mart's music store didn't shut down. They just stopped doing DRM. That should be considered to be a good thing.
Has anyone thought about lobbying Wal-Mart to offer the DRM-free versions of the DRM tracks that customers had bought, perhaps by paying whatever difference in price there was? That is something that Wal-Mart management might be convinced to do; but it won't happen if all you do is scream at Wal-Mart for shutting down their DRM servers.
In other words, let's make this lemon into lemonade. Let's establish a precedent, that forces DRM stores to distribute DRM-free versions to the customers when the DRM store shuts down.
That, boys and girls, will kill DRM faster than the current tone of bitching and moaning on ./
Re:refund (Score:3, Insightful)
Its not really free cereal, More like half price cereal.
Re:iTunes (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect the sale of DRMed music still exceeds the sale of non-DRMed music, thanks to the music label's insistence on Apple DRM'ing their music.
There, fixed that for ya. It's all up to the music labels. The only reason Amazon can sell DRM-free music is because the labels let them. And they don't let Apple, because they want Amazon to emerge as a competitor. Once distribution becomes a commodity again, the labels (who have a monopoly over the content) can jack prices back up. Right now it's Apple vs. the labels keeping prices in check. When the labels induce Amazon's success, it will be the consumers against the labels directly... and we know who will win then.
Re:refund (Score:3, Insightful)
I would be amazed if they refuse to give refunds. Think about it - Walmart has deep pockets, they are still selling music (and still seeking to make a profit off it), and they don't have a monopoly on music.
Pissing off past customers isn't exactly good business practice, and (I hate to admit it) Walmart is actually run by very skilled businessmen.
Re:refund (Score:3, Insightful)
Except in California, where EULAs are on some very shaky legal ground.
Re:refund (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:refund (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't really expect them to give you anything except what they're selling for without a receipt, can you? You could have bought it five minutes ago. If you'd had the receipt (or a gift receipt) and they'd given you $5 then I'd be mad.
Wish my mom would understand that.... we got $2 or something for a set of Christmas dishes that I'm sure she paid $20 for.
Re:refund (Score:5, Insightful)
Baby stuff is very frequently shoplifted; low-income people have kids (lots!) that soil themselves as often as rich people's kids do, and they don't like cloth nappies any more than you do. So even though it doesn't make "sense", they had no idea what the providence of your diapers were; you could have bought them stolen for 20 cents on the dollar.
How hard was it to show them a driver's license, anyway?
Re:refund (Score:3, Insightful)
You used something for 6 months and then expected a refund?! Then you threatened them with a chargeback that you might have not even qualified for? No wonder they weren't nice to you. Who do you think you are?