Microsoft's Zune makes you violate CC licenses

[mdlbear]

Medialoper » Zune’s Big Innovation: Viral DRM

Unfortunately Zune’s wireless music sharing is turning out to be one of those features that seemed better when it was just a rumor. While Zune users will be able share music with friends, there’s a catch (isn’t there always). As Jim noted earlier, recipients of shared songs will only be able to listen to them three times or for three days, whichever comes first. It sort of sounds like a really bad tire warranty.

Zune accomplishes this amazingly stupid feat by wrapping shared music in a proprietary layer of DRM, regardless of what format the original content may be in. If Microsoft’s claims are to be believed, this on-the-fly DRM will be seamless and automatic - which must be some kind of first for Microsoft.

...and that DRM, in turn, violates the Creative Commons license or any other license that prohibits DRM in order to encourage sharing.

I note in passing that all my music is available under a CC(by-sa-nc) license, and I'd be delighted to be part of a class-action suit against Microsoft.

(From slashdot

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Bastages.

Delenda est Microsoft.

(and I love the icon... somebody had far too much time on their hands, and I hope they used The GIMP rather than a pirated copy of Photoshop... OTOH, Adobe is the one company I hate more than MSFT, after the Dmitry Sklyarov incident, the one time I've ever been moved to personally take to the streets in protest....)

[mdlbear]

It came from BoingBoing; no idea how they made the original, but I used the Gimp to shrink it down to icon size.

I, too, took to the streets -- there were two of us with guitars, singing the songs we'd written for the occasion and improvising verses to "We Shall Overcome" and other old classics. You can find mine at: http://thestarport.com/Steve_Savitzky/Songs/dmitri.html

[elimloth.livejournal.com]

That ephemeral music mode is exactly what the RIAA wants, which is why Zune does it. Don't like it? Just buy non-DRMed music. I buy CDs direct from artists and rip the tracks onto my MP3 player. It goes no further. I can't the same for teens and pre-teens having watched many of them casually 'share' their music.

BTW, an interesting statistic about iPod owners appeared in /.. The entry quotes an article in the BBC news which quotes a Jupiter research report that 80+% of the music poured into the iPods is not from music stores. People do not want DRM (who would?) and they are willing to either purchase CDs to rip their music unburdened or rip it from other peoples' CDs.

Nonetheless, casual piracy is a problem. I can't belive how many people ask me to give them a copy of some music I am playing, and how grumpy they get when I give them the CD title and URL containing said music.

[mdlbear]

You don't quite get it -- even if I buy or create non-DRM'ed music, the Zune will apparently add the DRM to anything you share. Or maybe not allow you to share it -- reports differ. In either case, that's contrary to the wishes of somebody like me who uses a CC license that not only gives permission for non-commercial sharing, but prohibits adding DRM to my music.

Many people and some companies consider "casual piracy" -- sharing -- to be good advertising. This includes me and Microsoft, perhaps the only thing on which we agree. The difference is that Microsoft can't admit it.

The RIAA wants to stamp out fair use altogether. I don't.

[elimloth.livejournal.com]

Oh I got it the first time, but the money is in moving copyright controlled music and staying out of trouble.

I'd guess that if anyone brought up a favorable legal claim against Zune's DRM encapsulation of do-not-DRM CC music, that the end result would be Zune simply not copying any of it for the purpose of time limited sharing. That wouldn't help you, now would it.

I don't like the RIAA or MPAA attempts to destroy fair use either, but there has not been any decent ways to keep fair use from becoming the piracy hole because of piracy. Presently the RIAA and MPAA are going after *anyone* who provides straight copies of fiels that can transfer music or videos. Zune music sharing represents a negotiated way to do this without incurring lawsuits.

If that isn't bad enoough, the POS DMCA law prevents people from converting all their DRM'd titles to a different format either directly by their own means or by use of a product. For example, PlayForSure titles do not play on Zune because to do so would be illegal under DMCA. Or, iTunes DRM'd titles won't play on Zune and vica versa for the same reason (see http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004910.php for some details).

What I was tryinng to get across is that any of these players that require DRM'd titles are just not worth it. Zune sharing, iTunes based titles, SACDs, BluRay DVDs HD DVDs, are all junk given the chains they throw around something you think you own.

[mdlbear]

..."any of these players that require DRM'd titles are just not worth it."

I have no intention of buying one, but if we can generate enough anger and frustration among the millions of people who do, maybe something will get accomplished. Nothing will get accomplished by keeping quiet and going along with them.

[elimloth.livejournal.com]

Anger and frustration are mere annoyances to people who have a money making model. The most effective way to make it hurt is to not buy the technology. Two case points of an effective boycott are DivX and the Sony MD. Circuit City lost hundreds of millions of dollars when people turned in their DivX players and stopped buying the sullied disks. Sony lost similar amounts when people stopped buying prerecorded MDs and dumped the MD recorders. DivX is dead and MD recorders are only used by a small niche market, usually reporters recording interviews.

The target market, however, is not agry or frustrated. The iPod is successful (albeit 80% of people with them use it to hold copies of bought CDs) as is the iTunes music store, and the light DRM seems to be acceptable to people. I think this generation doesn't care all that much about keeping their pop tunes. Archiving is not top on their list but having the latest track of the month is topmost.

I'll stick with recordable CDs for the duration.

[mdlbear]

BTW, calling copyright infringement "piracy" is part of the problem. It isn't even "theft" -- it's copyright infringement. The entire copyright system is broken -- it was originally devised to protect the business model of book printers. It's all about protecting printers and publishers; if it gets any money to the authors and performers it's a side effect, and considered an undesirable side effect by the publishers.

My License

[idea-fairy.livejournal.com]

You've started me wondering if I should start using some kind of CC license for my poetry and such.

My current license is a homebrew paragraph that says little more than "Play nice with my stuff, and if you make significant money from it I'd like my share." My excuse for not using CC is that I didn't know about it back in the mid 1990's when I started posting on the Web.

Re: My License

[mdlbear]

It didn't exist back in the mid '90's. It works for me, especially since I'm not expecting to make big piles of money from my music, but do want to at least sell enough CDs and so on to break even. The share-alike, non-commercial license is basically filk-friendly.