Walmart shuts down DRM servers (customers loose their music)

(oh noes there pirating out pc games, why oh why when we are giving them such a good experience and an good piece of mind, why oh why would anyone want a DRM free copy of out product, the DRM makes it so much better, it adds to the experience, it is almost as if they don't like the DRM but that cant be true, because we the developers love it and we love our games so that means if the gamers want the games then they must also love the game and thus think the same way as we do and also love the DRM )

jk

anyway

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/ [...] g-dow.html



Wal*Mart shutting down DRM server, nuking your music collection -- only people who pay for music risk losing it to DRM shenanigans
Posted by Cory Doctorow, September 26, 2008 8:34 PM | permalink
Hey suckers! Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they're repaying your honesty by taking away your music. Unless you go through a bunch of hoops (that you may never find out about, if you've changed email addresses or if you're not a very technical person), your music will no longer be playable after October 9th.

But don't worry, this will never ever happen to all those other DRM companies -- unlike little fly-by-night mom-and-pop operations like Wal*Mart, the DRM companies are rock-ribbed veterans of commerce and industry, sure to be here for a thousand years. So go on buying your Audible books, your iTunes DRM songs, your Zune media, your EA games... None of these companies will ever disappear, nor will the third-party DRM suppliers they use. They are as solid and permanent as Commodore, Atari, the Soviet Union, the American credit system and the Roman Empire.

Boy, the entertainment industry sure makes a good case for ripping them off, huh? Buy your media and risk having it confiscated by a DRM-server shutdown. Take it for free and keep it forever.

so now that they've lost their DRM music, they can go "pirate" it since they've paid for it anyways

whos to worry?

I love CDs!

Yeah, downloaded tunes are a f**king rip. No cd but same price. Sony also shut down their drm music service a while ago, hope they don't do the same with securom (though I'm sure I could find a crack on the internet away.....)

and yet, what about the middle aged people who weren't taught how? I can tell you that at least my parents wouldn't know the first THING about P2P... (to be honest, they barely manage email ) - if they had used this system, they'd be buggered

This is excellent - I hope a few journalists now have the courage to phone up the PR departments of Sony, EA et al and ask what guarantees they are prepared to offer that they won't do the same as Walmart.

Of course, such a journalist might lose the odd future "exclusive"...


What's the betting not one of them has the balls?

I would never buy music through such a service. It's just not worth it.
Obviously this was posted to draw a parallel between music DRM and video game DRM, but it's not exactly the same issue. While there are a lot of similarities the general way in which we consume music and video games are actually pretty different. For one, I would never pay multiple times the cost of a game for a one time experience to play it live with the developers. However I would pay several times the amount of a CD to go to a concert. There is also already a precedent for buying games knowing they may have a limited shelf life. Console games basically have a lifespan only as long as the console it's on. And MMOs (which also happen to be the most costly games) are only as good as long as they are supported.
That's why in all the DRM/Piracy discussions I've avoided comparing music piracy with game piracy. In fact my views on sharing music differ from games.

As far as how easy it is to use P2P or Torrents I think I have a pretty good perspective of what is normal. There are a lot of people who even just using email is difficult so P2P or Torrents are completely out of their reach. But there are also a lot of people who do not completely understand them, but do know enough to use them. What happens though is that these people pretty quickly run into problems with spyware and viruses from using P2P. So even though they can use P2P they will often avoid doing so, assuming they learned their lesson the first time. Even the people who are a little more savvy then them and can effectively pirate music without issue, pirating software is a whole other ballgame because by their very nature pirating software requires running an executable. So be careful on how you define easy. Getting a car to 200mph is easy. Driving at 200mph is a whole other level and doing so in a race is even further beyond that.