Believe it or not; DRM for Zune is down!

Shocking, yes, I know, but in only four hours this evening Microsoft has managed to alienate over 150 additional customers with its insistence on Digital Rights Management (DRM). This time it is the DRM component of the Zune store that is down, according to the 164 posts so far over on the Zune forums. OK, so realistically, that probably means that about 100 times that many customers have been alienated, including my oldest son who is unable to use the $15 worth of Zune points that his mother just purchased for him because "Error C00D12F6: Can't verify your media usage rights. A local firewall may be blocking access to the Zune service".

Rest assured, it is not a firewall problem. It is just that the DRM servers on the Zune site are horked up, again. No DRM: no buying music. No buying music: unhappy son. Perhaps the best part of this was that a few customers who called the Zune support line (1-877-438-9863) to get help were told to reset their DRM components. That turns out to not be the best move they made tonight as after doing so they can no longer play ANY of the music they have purchased on the Zune store. Ever.

I will take guesses at this point for when the industry will FINALLY get it that DRM, while completely useless in combating actually piracy, is extremely useful in combating customer satisfaction.

If you really wanted to defeat the Zune DRM it really is not that hard. For one, you could use FairUse4WM. Alternatively, my old friend Rob Hensing, in the Security Engineering group at Microsoft recommends using the old trick of burning the songs on CD and ripping them again to remove the DRM from legally purchased music. Those ideas work for music. If your fancies turn to DVD movies on your Zune, there are some suggestions for how to do it from Microsoft employees on the TechNet and MSDN blogs sites. Keith Combs apparently prefers the Xilisoft DVD Ripper Platinum. Andy Pennel appears to have figured out how to rip DVDs to play both on his Zune and his Media Center PC, but won't tell you how on his MSDN blog. Probably a wise move considering he just admitted to a Federal Crime on a company-sponsored blog. Wouldn't want to give the prosecutor too much information now, would we? Rohan Thomas, however, discusses how to leverage new Silverlight features when ripping your DVDs on his MSDN blog. Steve Makofsky, over on the MSDN blogs, apparently uses DVD Decrypter and Nero Recode to get his DVD movies into a format suitable for playing on devices. That is the same piece of software Keith Combs used.

Did I mention, by the way, that Amazon sells music without DRM? It will play for sure on any device you have now or in in the future.

Published Mon, Dec 15 2008 10:21 PM by jesper
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Comments

# Alun Jones said on 16 December, 2008 07:51 AM

I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you, that DRM has managed to alienate more customers and get them hating the DRM providers. It's yet another example of a security technology that users will do pretty much anything to work around. Any security that users have a greater interest in working around than working with, is doomed to fail.

Me, I use DVD Decrypter, so that I can watch content I have legally purchased on my laptop without having to carry one DVD drive around for every region in which I buy DVDs. [That's 2 regions most days, occasionally fluctuating up to 3.]

It's really sad when you have to resort to such chicanery and trickery in order to make legal use of legally purchased material.

Microsoft have compounded their poor choice to use DRM with a poor error-handling procedure (remind me, what happened to music purchased from MSN Music recently? Oh, that's right, its DRM servers were taken down and all the music stopped working), and it's again caused a failure that could - should - have been predicted to cause nothing but consumer vexation.

As a content producer myself (software is content, and many of the suggestions in place for solving content protection on software are the same as used for movies and music), I can understand the desire to find a piece of technology that is perfect and prevents anyone from using my software if they haven't paid me - but I'm aware that such a perfect technology exists only in books and, ironically, movies. It's a fairy-tale.

When you apply DRM to solve your problem, you've added another problem, and not taken away the old one. Theft is still there (and the pirated videos come without DRM, making them even more attractive), but you've added the rather likely possibility that at some point in the none-to-distant future, you will be actively irritating your customers - en masse.

# Robert said on 16 December, 2008 07:58 AM

Zune (Microsoft) sells DRM free music, too.  Look for the MP3 icon.  I never buy from them anything but DRM free MP3.  Love the Zune Pass, but to purchase, MP3 only for me.

# LoungeFly said on 16 December, 2008 02:34 PM

The Zune pass also gives you 10 free songs a month (DRM free MP3).

# Darryl Burling said on 16 December, 2008 03:30 PM

It is great that Amazon (and others) sell MP3 music without DRM, but why not sell it to the rest of the world as well as to the US?

# Shana said on 16 December, 2008 04:24 PM

Thank you so much for posting this. I was on the phone with those idiots at Microsoft for TWO HOURS last night resetting my DRM and all of that madness until finally at minute 122 the guy says, "Oh. It looks like the problem is on our end." I had JUST TOLD THE PREVIOUS IDIOT that it had to be coming from them. As of this morning at 6:30am it wasn't fixed, but hopefully by the time I get home this evening it will be repaired. Should I hold my breath?

# De said on 29 December, 2008 12:27 PM

You fail to mention service types that are forced to use DRM in order to stop one-night-stand piracy like with Napster To Go. For a subscription it is necessary so that license revocation can work for subscription tracks. I do agree on purchases, though.

By linking Fairuse4WM you are presenting people a vehicle for piracy, you realize?