Microsoft Media Player shreds your rights

[Gizmo]

Charlie Demerjian over at The Inquirer has a very informative rant on Windows Media Player 11.

"One of the problems with WiMP11 is licensing and backing it up. If you buy media with DRM infections, you can't move the files from PC to PC, or at least you can't and have them play on the new box. If you want the grand privilege of moving that content, you need to get the approval of the content mafia, sign your life away, and use the tools they give you. If you want to do it in other ways, you are either a lawbreaker or following the advice of J Allard. Wait, same thing."

Read more on the Front Page:
http://www.aoaforums.com/frontpage/content/view/1211/2/

[cloasters]

Aww. Micwosoft is always the bestest folks!

[madcatmk3]

doesn't apple do this already?

[Áedán]

What? Not allow you to move a file with DRM? I've done that several times with iTunes. You don't even need to worry about license files, as iTunes can do an online lookup. The only limitation is that you can only authorise up to 5 computers to play a track. If you want to authorise after the 5th machine, you have to deauthorise the same number as you want to authorise.

[MONKEYMAN]

To be honest I think that they have every right to protect content, even if you disagree with this theory.....what is forcing you to use the software?

I'm sorry but ill be honest here...even if you yourself have music you actually paid for, who here doesn't know some-one with a hard drive full of pirate music? or an illegal copy of windows? or a stack of copied DVD's? In my mind for years people have been stealing what other people have produced, this is the come-back, yes I agree limiting your content licences may seem extreme and will affect decent, paying customers but it will help artists/developers fill in the dent in their profits made by people who take it for nothing.

[dsio]

No, it won't change a thing for pirates. Pirates will, and always have been able to make a joke of copy protection. It will effect people that actually pay for their music, but will do nothing at all to stop pirates.

And just for the record, I have an entire Maxtor 200GiB overflowing with my Mp3 collection, which I've never paid a red cent for. I might also add, none of the artists I listen to ever ASK for payment, yet produce music of a greater standard and quality than any major labels.

As a result, this isn't going to mean anything to me.

[MONKEYMAN]

The end result though is that they will make more money, fair play to them.

If you were running these record companies would you be thinking about how people feel if it wasn't a large enough problem to slow down your profits?.....I wouldn't. We all know people who pay for music will mostly keep paying, those who don't will have a slightly harder time but record labels won't care because the others pay more to make up for any loss.

[keithwalton]

It costs you nothing to get you're license key back to put your music back on a machine that you have purchased. All i have to do with my hmv music is play it through there version of media player whilst signed into my account. It auto gets the license back for the track. It's not that bad really! I for one am happy to pay £15/month to download as much music as i like from the hmv database as they allow me to transfer it to my mp3 players as well (pda and phone) without hassle

[Áedán]

As mp3 or other DRM format? Thing I find is that I spend less than £15 a month on average on music anyhow.

[keithwalton]

The files transfer across as drm protected wma's so the device must be able to support that. I never used to spend that much but now i get alot more newer music as well as back catalogues than i ever did before. Some 600 tracks in the last 2 and abit months. Which is about £400 worth of music from there stores!

[skool h8r]

meh, record souncard output, that solves the problems. Or re-encode in audacity.