Believe it or not; DRM for Zune is down!

re: Believe it or not; DRM for Zune is down!

De — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:27:15 GMT

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?

re: Believe it or not; DRM for Zune is down!

Shana — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 22:24:22 GMT

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?

re: Believe it or not; DRM for Zune is down!

Darryl Burling — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:30:06 GMT

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?

re: Believe it or not; DRM for Zune is down!

LoungeFly — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:34:30 GMT

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

re: Believe it or not; DRM for Zune is down!

Robert — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:58:11 GMT

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.

re: Believe it or not; DRM for Zune is down!

Alun Jones — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:51:04 GMT

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.