http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/po [...] -keys.html

Customers who have purchased music from Microsoft's now-defunct MSN Music store are now facing a decision they never anticipated making: commit to which computers (and OS) they want to authorize forever, or give up access to the music they paid for. Why? Because Microsoft has decided that it's done supporting the service and will be turning off the MSN Music license servers by the end of this summer.

...Bennett insists that MSN Music keys are, in fact, not yet expiring. Technically speaking, that's true if I authorize one of my PCs, never get rid of it for the rest of my life, and never upgrade its OS, I will be able to play my tracks forever. But as some of our readers note, this technicality is not rooted in reality the authorizations will now expire when the computer does

I think I would burn them back to cd's and re rip them.

what if you have like 500 songs that was purchased, only standard audio cds are drm free, you will spend like $30 on cds to back up your collection then you will spend days ripping the music, it is something that shouldn't happen, online DRM is one of the worst because things like this will always happen, no company will be around for ever and when there gone, so is your content

When it comes to DRM, and youve paid for it, just like the rain forest, burn as you go

Easy solution, buy dual layer DVD's and start burning. one dual layer DVD will hold over 1500 songs at 5MB each. So in reality it will hold about 2000 songs, give or take. If you have more than 2000 songs, they are not all DRM (or you have more money than sense)

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/Micr [...] 28040.html

This is one of the reasons we should re-volt against DRM!!!

and i never even bought music off MSN, with this DRM you no longer buy licenses to play music what youve bout is a file that cant be moved, what happens when you upgrade your OS or buy a new machine? you can no longer play your music and have to buy it AGAIN! if they disable the system they should release software to remove the DRM "protection".


boonality your missing the bigger picture, imagine if this happend with your games from steam? and i do not know if the DRM will allow you to do as you suggest, i have a strange feeling the DRM would follow and as soon as you tried to rip them back to another PC they wont play.

would this sound naive if i were to say that unlike microsoft, valve are more likely to have a contingency plan in the event of this happening.

i know what i would do, get a new hard drive and keep my old one as a secondary.

the problem is that most companies wont. when there ready to close up, there not going to care about anyone else.

+ most companies are less inclined to not care about about anything that has to do with their customers if there not getting paid for it.

look at creative. the EAX console for the audigy 2 cards crashes with a ntdll.dll error (many users reported this mainly on dual core AMD systems)

look at actiontec (possibly one of the only router/modem on the planet that has memory leaks )

look at HP (some of their older pocket PCs still have many of the problems reported from day one and it has been like 5 years and still nothing

the reason for this is because they no longer support those items, why have a team of worker spend hundreds of hours fixing a problem for a product that they are no longer making money from (all it will cause is for the company to loose money)

same goes with drm

they have the mind set of

why do we have to do anything more for them, we already we already got their money, theres nothing more to get from them, so theres no need to care about any problems there currently having

when ever the drm relies on an external source, then your basically hand cuffed to the evil company. then their company craps out, so does the content you spend your money

any drm crap that phones home to make sure your still valid will have thing problem as no company will last for ever. But i know one thing, long after the company dies, there will still be people wanting to play those classics and will be unable to

alternatively you could pirate it...

but that would be illegal and the riaa will sue you for doing that.

1 person got almost 200 thousand dollars in fines for pirating 12 songs, imagine if you pirate a connection of 500, they will have a field day on you.

burning to audio cd and ripping it back is also very expensive

even if a company is not currently screwing you over, when the time comes (and it will) they will screw you over

when they screw you over, what will you do, cry and say you just lost a customer, (well a little too late for that, there not making any more content and there closing down. they lost you as a customer weather you like it or not)

the steam thing would affect me but music won't, i only buy cd's anyway.

It seems a person who pirates a small number of songs is at much greater risk than a person who pirates a vast library. If the RIAA sued someone who pirated 50,000 songs and was awarded the same percentage as the 12 song downloader, the award would be seen as ridiculous amounting to over 833,000,000.

and fining a person $200,000 for a handful of songs isn't ridiculous? More specifically an individual for whom that amounts to more than the value of all of their belongings and debts combined?

DRM is bad and it will prove to be worse and worse the longer it goes on. Fortunately a few developers are dipping their toes in or diving in completely to the idea that DRM is not the answer. Stardock is basically leading the charge and hopefully many will follow. We will see how things shake out though.

but with services like stardock, your chained to a company that can close down at any moment and take all of your content with it. even if it is convenient and user friendly, if theres any kind of server side DRM then your content will lost only as long as the company

look at battlefield 2, your multiplayer serial is linked to ea's server and makes sure that you have a paid valid cd key, when EA dies, so does every battlefield game

with older games that never used server side DRM, (morrowind, oblivion, and many others that just require a serial number to allow the install)
those games will will last as for a 100000000000000 years if the disk is still readable since the content is linked to your pc and the cd and not a retarded external DRM source

just like the msn music drm when they junk it, the content is frozen in space, they wont be able to transfer it and if a user has a little problem that causes windows to no longer function, then there music is pretty much gone because they wont be able to get their new windows install to read the drmed crap

then the industry will complain that pirating is going up and then DRM will get worse, not only that but it would also be counted as LOST sales when in reality the music was already bought, the media industry as a whole is a jackass.

Meh.

This is why I buy my music CDs (and to support the artist). Then I could encode them any way I want; primarily OGG, but I'm switching over to FLAC.

No, DRM won't get worse, in fact, it is being DROPPED because people are pirating stuff that they have already bought off p2p networks, in order to get rid of DRM.

Personally, I think that MSN Music should release a DRM-stripping application for MSN Music and Urge songs, so that people can keep their legally bought music without having to worry about "What if I buy a new computer in the future now that X store is defunct!?"

The OP's avatar always disturbs me. Are you a furry or something?

i dont know, it looks kind of.... anime(ish) to me? do you watch anime perchance Razor?
addendum: yeah, looking in the profile a link to an anime site....
addendum to the addendum: isn't addendum a fantastic word?

looks quite a foxy lady to me, you know you would.