THIS is why DRM is bad...

So MS was planning to shut off its DRM servers for its now offline MSN Music service, a move that would have screwed each customer out of their paid-for content the moment they upgraded their PC.

And it is NOT just MS so don't blame them. ANYONE who sold DRMed music could do the same thing to each and every one of us.

Yes, I am sure there are ways around the DRM. But the fact is...DRM just hurts the paying customer. It does not hurt those stealing the content, since they rip the DRM off and never look back.

So yeah, before you consider buying anything online...check out if you can purchase a DRM-free copy. Technically, subverting DRM is illegal...but after reading this article...well...decide for yourself.

 

Just read the subject on a different forum. MS seems to be against the customer lately, vista, now this..
I blame them anyway,even if it`s not just them
Throw a rock in a lake and you`ll stirr it all up.

 

It isn't just MS though... all companies could do this. MS, understandably, wants to completely shut down that service as it never made them money anyway...which is why they closed it in the first place.

Its a logical decision to stop something that is just guaranteed to drain money away...but they didn't think it through to screwing the customer. Or maybe they did, but didn't care.

Any company could do that. What if iTunes went belly-up (hard to believe, I know...but think about it)?

 

Thats why I still buy CDs!

 

Here here!! 90% of the music in my iTunes is imported from my cd collection. I've purchased a song or two, here or there, but not any full albums.

 

I get my music from CD's . About 2% was sent to me by friends....but of course only because i was too lazy to rip single songs from my many many CD's

 

No wonder M$ is not very liked.

 

Nope, I'll never buy full albums from the net.

 

That's one of the reasons I use subscription music. For the cost of about 1 discounted album per month, I have a practically unlimited size rotating music collection.

 

they should give a full refund to anyone who purchased content from them. a full refund.

of course, they wont.

 

These days nearly all music is available as legal DRM-free downloads from amazon.com and often other online vendors as well. There's no reason to buy DRM music anymore, IMO.

However, DRM is still fine for music subscription services, if you want to do that. In that case, there's no real issue if the company ends the service... you were paying by the month anyway, so you can just switch to using another service.

 

i personally got burned by something like this when walmart decided to go drm free. luckily i had switched mostly to amazon by then, but not being able to get to my already bought music still sucks. esp. when i lost some on my mp3 player and couldnt transfer

 

I'm not a proponent of most DRM-free digital distrobution paid music. From what I've seen, most of it is low quality recordings. It's like paying full hardcover price for a book printed in single ply toilet paper that comes on a roll.

 

Yeah, that's hard to imagine considering how popular iTunes is... but... they've got their butts covered just in case:

http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/service.html

 

Yeah... yet another reason I will never use iTunes.

 

Ruckus ftw!! Thank god my school has free dl through them. Sure it is DRMed so that I can't put it on an mp3 player without paying a whopping $15 a semester (being completely sarcastic here) but it really has been a lifesaver to my wallet and to my staying legal.

 

Music shouldn't have strings attached to it

Listen to internet radio

 

More and more companies are getting the clue that DRM does not work. Until they all figure it out, they will only hurt the customer.

 

FWIW: http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/14543.cfm

 

Well the way I see it, a company like Ruckus that gives all the DRM downloads you want for free and asks for someone to pay $15 a semester to be able to make them mp3s and put them on an mp3 player IMHO doesn't "hurt the customer."

In fact, I think it is a great niche that is a really great way to get all the music you want without breaking the bank, and getting it all LEGALLY. ^-^;

 

Chances are that can be challenged in court, and the EULA ruled unconscionable...which basically means that the consumer is no longer constrained by the EULA.

Then, we'd be able to sue for damages and/or get money refunded.

 

All Apple would have to do is claim that all you paid for was a license to the music. Then that part of the EULA wouldn't be nearly as unconscionable, given that it was enumerated before purchases that the license expires when Apple expires.

DRM will stick around until someone finds a better alternative.

 

you did pay for a license to listen to the music, but regardless of what the EULA says, the impression they give to the user is that the license you have is permanent.

 

lol why pay for a license?? You should get all DRM licenses for free.... if you pay for something it should be for an mp3, wma, m4p etc. lol

If you are paying for a DRM track well... then that's your problem lol.

 

The only DRM content I use is from Ruckus because it's free. If I feel compelled to buy a song, I either purchase the CD or buy the song off amazon.com, because amazon.com has DRM-free mp3 downloads (often for cheaper than iTunes!).

 

I don't understand of why you want to buy music online. CD quality is far better.

 

^^yep cd's all the way. i have one hell of a cd collection.

 

Because:

1. Buying CDs means I have to get up. Either to the store or to my mailbox.
2. Of the 10-20 tracks on the CD, I only want 3.
3. I'm paying $100 per year for a subscription to Yahoo! Unlimited.

 

Like flipfire mentioned internet radio is really nice. I would recommend checking out www.pandora.com for legal free music to listen to while you are online.
Tim

 

Well unless you are actually listening to the WAV format that a CD comes with, a CD really doesn't have better fidelity. I mean, I can download an mp3 at 192 kb/s and have good enough quality that I can only hear a difference in fidelity if I listen to that same song as a WAV...

 

or you can download tracks ripped in vbr 256+ and have near cd quality.. if you download music that is


(argh cap'n! )


also, i own a ton of cds, but haven't bought one for about a year.



...oh and DRM is lame.

 

Death to DRM!

 

I strongly agree. I listen to Pandora or streaming SHOUTcast radio instead of buying DRM music. I'm fine without it, and if someone made an MP3 player that was compatible with Linux and had internet radio built in then i would definitely buy it.

 

2K Games has removed all the DRM crap from BioShock. link.

Finally they've come to the conclusion, DRM crap is bad for sales?
But what about Mass Effect????

 

I remember a got a free song with a bottle of soda. That was pretty cool until I tried to redeem it. Buy.com only allowed you to buy music with Internet Explorer (version 6 at the time), the site was buggy, and the song never played, even after I downloaded a bunch of DRM updates from Windows Update. At least iTunes works.

 

Those jerks me and my GF woke up at 4 am to watch Germany VS who ever... I was just against germany even though shes german and we kept getting stupid DRM error >.< 2 euros and 5 hours of sleep wasted

 

Frankly, I haven't purchased anything that wasn't a hardcopy CD (and usually at a "used CD" store to boot) and probably never will.

DRM in any form does NOT stop the people who won't pay for it.
It only annoys and cheats the people who do pay for it.

Let's be honest... the music industry has stopped producing quality music. All you get is the next "model who thinks he/she can sing".
The most enjoyment you can possibly get out of it most of these CDs comes from admiring the plastic surgery or photoshop job done for the pictures.

There is plenty of talent that offers their music for MUCH lower prices and in some cases for free without DRM.

On the "once in 10 years" chance I find a big-name professional artist CD I'd actually like to own, I'll wait until someone tires of it and buy it for cheap at a used CD store. (and promptly convert it to music file and then archive the CD)

 

BTW, Microsoft reversed its position yesterday in case you didn't notice.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/pos...0-will-continue-to-support-msn-music-drm.html

 

DRM? never had one...
Death to RIAA as well!

 

record labels are obsolete and will hopefully all melt down and become extinct. the RIAA is a bunch of old men who are still attempting to sue everyone for downloading music. they should learn to embrace the future already. they will NEVER stop music from being distributed on the internet via p2p clients/bittorrent/etc. never ever ever ever. when they try and shutdown one thing, 5 more of whatever they just attempted to shutdown popup. give up!

 

not exactly.

all the drm is still there, they just lifted the limit on the number of simultaneous installs you can have.

you still have to activate through their servers... etc.

 

Yup, the lifted the restriction on number of PCs it can be installed on and number of times it's installed.

But you're right, SecuRom is still installed on your computer, the installation still has to be activated through their servers, and the disc still needs to be in the drive in order to play the game.

 

I can't agree more Greg. I had this same problem but with SONY. They had a music service called SonicStage which they recently shutdown, since the music was in some proprietary format, not MP3. I did not lose any money, but I had a free 10 song download code from SONY. So I downloaded my 10 songs. Now that the store is closed down and the music is in some dumb format that was SONY specific, the songs I have are useless. Whats even worse is that SONY prevented you from copying the songs downloaded to the PC to any other PC or player!

 

Actually, I did notice 19 posts ago. ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=3512095&postcount=19) But the stay of execution is only until 2011.

 

Until the CD gets scratched

 

Does iTunes use DRM? I thought apple was against it which is why the music companies didn't want to allow them to make a "20$ a month" plan. . .

Honestly, I am getting really tired of ALL of it. I don't want to pirate anything, but as many people point out, sometimes the pirated version is better than the retail version. No DRM to worry about. No bs protection. The fact is that people get rid of the protections in a matter of an instant and then it's only left *****ing the honest people.

I have other problems with MS, but I don't think they relate to DRM :\ (like how they will complain if you download/pirate a copy of Windows 98, which they don't even sell or support anymore. The very first Windows is still illegal to own without a paid license.) I'm all for them making their money, but once the money becomes marginal, the "protections" should be lifted. Copyrights included.

 

That's why you burn copies and store them on hard drives and MP3 players. I always try to have backup copies of my music if I can.
Tim

 

That's actually an intersting point. What happens to all this DRM material after copyright sunsets? At some point, it will become public domain. I think the law needs to enforce sunset constrains on DRM. DRM should have to be double acting, I think. What I mean by that is that the user should be required to legally use content, but the producer should be required to maintain license servers, and if the servers are unavailable, the DRM should automatically deactivate. It would be tough to figure out how to make that work out, but it would be much fairer.

 

I tried the early drm music services, but threw my money away in the same fashion. Never buy drm stuff if you want to keep it. Your ownership of that music is dependent upon the company continuing the service. I still have most of the CD's I bought since I was about 13 or so. However, I've had to fight to keep most of the drm content I purchased everytime I want to migrate to a different computer/back-up or find a way to use a new mp3 player. Go out and buy the CD and rip instead. You will be able to keep the music and might be able to save some money since specials happen for CDs much more often than digital content.

 

Eh, but cds are overpriced anyway. Cds are easier to mass produce than cassettes yet they are still more expensive?
No thanks, I would much rather buy music off amazon.com. I think most of it comes 256 vbr anyway. Near cd quality and good amount of room to reencode at a lower bitrate.