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

[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.