How Microsoft's Incompetence Will Bring Us DRM-Free Music
Tim Anderson:
How Apple is changing DRM | Technology | The Guardian: When Apple approached record companies about selling their music digitally five years ago, they "were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied", according to Steve Jobs's recollection of the process. That meant using digital rights management (DRM) - a software wrapper - to protect songs from unlimited copying. Jobs says it is crucial to the contract: "If our DRM system is compromised and their music becomes playable on unauthorized devices, we have only a small number of weeks to fix the problem or they can withdraw their entire music catalog from our iTunes store."...
If DRM does not in fact discourage piracy, then it is merely a nuisance for the user. Now the Guardian understands that most download stores will remove DRM on permanent music downloads. "We are going to be selling non-DRM music from the summer", says Dave Elston, HMV's digital content manager, adding that it would solve "obvious interoperability issues."... Amazon has announced that its DRM-free MP3 download store, already online in the US, will be rolled out internationally later this year.... [T]he music companies are now abandoning DRM because it worked too well. Apple wouldn't license its version to rivals - so the best-selling iPod drove the iTunes store to its present position, where it is the third-largest music retailer in any form in the US. Rosenblatt says that record labels "have been desperate to find a viable competitor to Apple and iTunes.".... "The record companies don't like dealing with Apple, because Apple is in a position where it can dictate the economic terms and dictate the business models," says Rosenblatt. "What's going to draw people away from iTunes? One answer is to get rid of DRM."
Last month, former customers of Microsoft's defunct MSN Music store in the US received an unwelcome email. "As of August 31, 2008, we will no longer be able to support the retrieval of licence keys for the songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers," it said.... The problem is worse than it first appears, since a "new" device may actually be your existing PC. Some users habitually reinstall Windows to keep it running sweetly, but doing so removes its authorisation.... Worse still, the DRM component in Windows can get corrupted for no apparent reason.
This is a common problem for users installing the BBC's iPlayer software, for example, which also uses Microsoft DRM. The fix, described in detail on the iPlayer support pages, involves deleting all the files in the hidden DRM folder within Windows. A side effect is that existing licences are destroyed - so existing DRM-protected files could well no longer play.... If the licence server has been turned off, the music will never, ever play again. What if you back up your licences? This used to be possible through Windows Media Player. But Microsoft removed the option from version 11, introduced for Windows Vista. Microsoft's Adam Anderson told us that licence backup did not work properly anyway...
