Last month, Wal-Mart announced its plans to shut down its DRM authorisation servers, which would mean that anyone who bought DRM crippled music from Wal-Mart would no longer be able to authorise the protected songs for playback on new devices or computers after the server shut-off date. However, after Wal-Mart received some feedback from its customers, it has now decided to reverse its decision and said that it would keep its DRM authorisation servers running "for the present time".
Despite Wal-Mart's decision to keep its servers running, they are still advising its customers to back-up their songs on recordable audio CD. Once songs are recorded to CD, they lose their copy protection and thus can be played on any equipment capable of playing audio CDs, including other PCs with no longer the need to contact an authorisation server.
Wal-Mart's original decision came just a year after it launched its DRM-free store. Its DRM-free store delivers music in the widely supported MP3 format, which is not subject to authorisation before it can be played back on new devices. Yahoo already received a lot of negative publicity over its decision to close its DRM servers. Now they have agreed to give customers coupons to replace their DRM-protected tracks.
While all 4 major labels are currently selling DRM-free tracks through various online stores, Universal Music Group has only agreed to sell DRM-free music up to January 2009 and has yet to decide on whether to continue selling DRM-free music after that point. The other major 3 don't seem to have any plans on whether to stop and make another decision after a certain period, although EMI is the only major label that sells DRM-free music through iTunes, the most popular music retailer.
hihi, how nice of them to give that awayOnce songs are recorded to CD, they lose their copy protection and thus can be played on any equipment capable of playing audio CDs, including other PCs with no longer the need to contact an authorisation server.
Still DRM is probably the way to go for the music industry to fight the pirates.
I'm not trying to be rude, but DRM will never stop pirates. That's because all DRM systems are breakable and that's because they have to be breakable. If they weren't breakable you couldn't use them! If your DVD player couldn't break the DRM on your DVDs to get the movie then your DVD player wouldn't be much good would it? Everything would look scrambled. Since they're breakable the pirates will always have a clean source without DRM.
Pirates aren't why DRM was created though. That's just a myth. Think about it. Imagine that you buy a CD and it has DRM protections, but your friend downloads it DRM free. How did having DRM on your copy stop your friend from downloading it? Well, it didn't stop piracy at all did it?
DRM is not about pirates. Pirates weren't going to pay anyway. It's really to get customers to re-buy the same product over and over and over. Kill the servers and everyone has to re-buy all their music. From who? Probably another company that will eventually also kill their servers. Re-buy, Re-buy, Re-buy.
I'll use Microsoft as an example. Windows Vista is a perfect example of DRM gone gay. It locks itself to my motherboard so I can't resell my copy when I'm done with it. If my motherboard fries and I have to get a new one, I have to buy a new copy of Windows Vista too! Well I'm supposed to anyway. I'd probably just pirate it.
However, I've already paid for one copy! So, why would they do this? Well, they say it's to stop the pirates. Really? The pirates already have another version of Vista where the DRM has been hacked. It's all over the sharing networks. My friend just installed it like two days ago. His stolen copy has the DRM turned off basically. The copy I paid for doesn't. Does that seem fair?
So, what if we asked Microsoft to disable the DRM now that we know it doesn't work? Why have it if it doesn't work right? Well, Microsoft will just lie to your face and say it does work! They'll list off some fake statistics about how the piracy numbers are down as I watch my friend's stolen Vista display his screen saver. Yes, it stops those pirates right in their tracks! If people aren't downloading it it's because they don't want it, not because they can't get it.
Crazy huh? But Microsoft isn't dumb. They know what they're doing. DRM is just to cause people like me, who they know have money because I already bought my first copy and don't want to be a pirate, to possibly have to buy it again at some point in the future. That's all it is. It's content and software that's purposely designed to stop working. How can that ever be a good thing?
DRM = Greed and it has nothing to do with fighting piracy people are being distracted, wake up! less you fall like the rest into the scheme. I'll always be against Greed and DRM I know better then to fall into such traps. People need to stop listening to everything they hear or read in the main stream media as they are being brain washed think about it. Do you really think?, The RIAA, MPAA are on your side? lmao all they care about is making a profit they could give a shit about your rights or what you want.
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