Thank you, Micro$oft!

[mdlbear]

Techdirt: Microsoft's Final 'Up Yours' To Those Who Bought Into Its DRM Story

Remember a few years back when Microsoft launched a new type of DRM under the name "PlaysForSure"? The idea was to create a standard DRM that a bunch of different online music download stores could use, and which makers of digital music devices could build for. Except... like any DRM, it had its problems. And, like any DRM, its real purpose was to take away features, not add them, making all of the content hindered by it less valuable. Yet, because Microsoft was behind it, many people assumed that at least Microsoft would keep supporting it. Well, you've now learned your lesson. Playsforsure was so bad that Microsoft didn't even use it for its own Zune digital media device. Along with that, Microsoft shut down its failed online music store, and now for the kicker, it's telling anyone who was suckered into buying that DRM'd content that it's about to nuke the DRM approval servers that let you transfer the music to new machines.

Anyone out there on my flist dumb or careless enough to have fallen for PlaysForSure music? Sorry about that.

Comments

[deborah_c]

My esteemed about-to-be-ex-employer kind of did, although probably not the way you're thinking.

PlaysForSure was also meant to be something where you could stick the logo on your device if it passed Microsoft's compatibility tests, so people would know they stood a sporting chance of playing the music at all. This has now been changed; putting "Certified for Vista" is more than a little confusing. You're going to run Vista on a box with 96MB of RAM and a DSP? Good luck...

[mdlbear]

Of course, Vista's yet another Microsoft technology on its way to the trashcan...

Not to mention being the best advertisement for Ubuntu I've seen so far. (Probably best to wait until tomorrow before downloading Ubuntu 8.04.)