Walmart Caves On DRM Removal

cmunic8r99 writes in with an email he received from walmart.com yesterday evening about the pending shutdown of their DRM services (which we discussed a while back). Walmart has reconsidered and won't be shutting off its DRM servers after all. They are still moving to an all-MP3 store, but won't break all the DRMed music its customers have already downloaded; this because of "feedback from the customers."

Feedback ...

[Anonymous Coward]

probably a nice word was said in WallMarts shell-like by a rather expensive lawyer
rather than any of their "customers"

Re:Presumably...

[Gewalt]

They do not have the rights to take such actions as you propose. Only Apple/iTunes was smart enough to get that written into their contract.

DMCA exemption

[sunderland56]

Wouldn't "Disabling a DRM format that is obsolete" be a good candidate to add to the DMCA exemptions? [slashdot.org]

The real price of DRM

[initialE]

For consumers, living in constant doubt of their content. For providers, servers that they will have to run, like, forever. And the admins who maintain them.

Re:Presumably...

[electrictroy]

Do it anyway. It would be fun watching tiny RIAA try to sue billion-dollar Walmart.

In my view all Walmart would be doing is simply trading "broken items" with new working items. Just like trading a broken radio for a working radio. That's called good customer service, and Walmart would gain far more money from their happy customers, then they'd lose against a mosquito like RIAA.

Re:DMCA exemption

[Sockatume]

"Where necessary for a customer to continue exercising his or her rights on the media." If they take away the rights that you paid for - which is the whole damn product when you buy something with DRM - then it is entirely reasonable that you can circumvent the DMCA to regain those rights.

Re:Wal-Mart

[gsgriffin]

Agreed. Those of us in America should live outside America for a while. I got back from living in South Africa for over a year. I wish they had more lawsuits! You heard me right. It because of lawsuit and the threat oif lawsuits that companies take us into consideration and have to build things safer. Ever bought a toaster outside of the US. You'll burn you hand the first time you use it. Not in America. The only toasters you find will be more carefully designed and labeled. Why because of the threat of lawsuits. We still get cheap products. The unsafe products are shipped from China to other parts of the world. Hate the laywer. Like the eventual product.

Re:Feedback from Walmart Customers

[Sockatume]

If the DRM servers stay on, the customers continue to use the files they paid for. If the DRM servers switch off, those files will become useless at some point in the future and must be repurchased, making money for aforementioned studios. If everyone's switching to DRM-free music, you can bet the studios want them to switch their DRM servers off too.

Re:Walmart isn't judgement-proof...

[electrictroy]

>>>Walmart employees can get disciplined for working during their breaks now...

Most stores have had that restriction for years. I got disciplined for working my break at JCPenney, and that was back in 1992! Don't blame the store; it's the government's fault that things are that way. The stores are merely trying to protect themselves form government punishment.

Back to topic:

- If Walmart sold DRM songs, and Walmart turns-off the DRM servers, those songs would be non-functional.
- Walmart has an *obligation* to replace those broken songs with working songs (or get sued by angry consumers).
- I'm sure any competent judge would recognize that basic fact, and throw-away any RIAA lawsuit as anti-consumer.

In fact if the judge was particularly intelligent, he'd probably remind RIAA that they have already been slapped once for restricting retailers' freedom of trade, forming an illegal cartel, and anti-consumer "CD price fixing", and that he and other judges are still watching RIAA very carefully to see if they become a repeat offender.

Re:Wal-Mart

[PIBM]

Or this evil plan...

Think about closing the servers .. Save X per months. Cost of the future lawsuits, evaluate to something maybe greater than X, maybe smaller. Add in the bad publicity about closing them and the lawsuit, total losses are greater than the inital X.

Then wonder, what if we'd announce we'd close them, and shortly after get good free publicity about us catering to our users ? So we keep paying for X, but we get 5 * X in return just in the first month!

Anyway =)

Re:Now, if we can get off Windows

[Phroggy]

Hopefully they can pull their web developers' collective head out of their collective ass and make a web store that works on something other than internet explorer and windows.

This is precisely why Apple created both the iPod and the iTunes Store in the first place, and why Apple isn't concerned with turning a profit on the iTunes Store (as long as they break even). They wanted a portable MP3 player that would work with Macs, and they wanted digital music sales to be available for Macs and the iPod.

Unfortunately Apple doesn't think it's in their best interest to support Linux, although this is mostly due to technical hurdles (porting QuickTime to Windows was a huge pain in the ass and they wound up porting significant chunks of Mac OS in order to do it; porting QuickTime to Linux would be a whole new pain in the ass, and iTunes can't run without QuickTime).