Which reminded me of when the RIAA stated that lawsuits against the consumer were dead, kaput, no more and finally no longer endorsed or condoned by the RIAA.

You can probably use the same grain of salt for both statements.

Werner Music Group is in a pickle.  They want you to start buying their music again but they also think that DRM isn’t quite restrictive enough. Sure, they already tell you what players you can listen to your music on, they tell you how many times you can listen to it and on how many different devices.  They even have the ability to take away those rights at any time with a simple shutting down of a DRM server when they don’t feel like honoring the license agreement any more.

As I’m sure you’d agree, WMG feels that you have too much freedom with your purchased music.  To help curtail the rampant piracy allowed by previous draconian measures, they’ve come up with LaLa.  What is LaLa?  It’s simple. With LaLa, you can pay ten cents per song.  You then get absolutely nothing.

Seriously.  You pay them ten cents and they will allow you to listen to the song from a browser tab on their site.  Much like you listen to a song on M-TV or the radio, only that’s free.  This allows you to pay for that privilege.  You do feel privileged, don’t you?

While Michael Roberts is more diplomatic than I am about the whole affair, he doubts it will fly.

Imagine that.

They state that they were following the “regulations” set forth by the FCC. If that is the case, then why is DirecTV, Tivo and every other DVR system able to record the same shows that WMC can not?

Aha, therein lies the rub. The reason is because there are no “regulations” prohibiting the recording of any media. The FCC and MPAA attempted to dictate what the hardware makers could allow their hardware to record with something called broadcast flags, but the courts said they were high.

Imagine that your local schools stated that you could not drop your kids off in any vehicle manufactured with a sunroof. This was because you could inadvertently fall out of the car if the earth’s gravity were to reverse in areas with a high concentration of ill behaved children. Although the courts stated they were morons for attempting to enforce something like this, GM produced cars for your region that, if equipped with a sunroof, refused to turn into any school entrance. When asked, GM states “it’s the law”.

What Microsoft is doing is just as lame as my attempt at an analogy.

Microsoft loves digital rights management. They pack it into anything they can; music services, media centers, personal audio devices. If they are able to fit the code into something, you can pretty much guarantee that it will be shipped with it. When asked though, their common response(after their initial refusal to respond at all) is that their hand was forced by the media providers. Just like now. These concrete rules and regulations that they absolutely must adhere to. These absolute laws that they are unable to circumvent.

If only there were an alternative.

It’s just that they make it so easy, sometimes.

Take the latest news involving the Zune.  It’s likely that a future software update will install a copyright protection scheme that will block any unapproved media from being uploaded to it.  This means that Microsoft will determine whether you purchased it via approved channels.

That dvd you ripped at your house?  That’s almost guaranteed to be an “unapproved channel”.

The only thing that keeps me from being incensed is that we all get to choose which player we will use and if you get screwed by Microsoft, it’s because you wanted to.

You might remember that very recently, Microsoft announced that it would be shutting down the DRM servers for the now defunct MSN Music and any music purchased through that service would no longer be able to be moved to other computers(or reactivated if you upgraded your current computer). This meant that all the customers that bought music through the MSN Music service got the shaft. Big time. That’s what you get for renting music.

Fresh on the heels of that announcement, Microsoft began heavily advertising the music collection you could rent via “Zune Pass”. For less than the price of a CD per month (if you purchase cd’s for the ridiculous MSRP), then you can borrow millions of songs, from thousands of artists. You don’t actually get to do what you’d like to with the music, you just rent it. Kind of like satellite radio, I guess only with the added benefit of typical MS bloatware and the hassle of dealing with DRM approved players and such.

Initially, Zune’s giant-killing feature was going to be the ability for the Zune to “share” data with other nearby Zunes. The problem is, people aren’t willing to buy the player in numbers large enough for the suckers owners to find others that made the same mistake in the immediate vicinity, so the ads that touted that feature were quietly swept under the carpet.

So, the whole “Zune social network” thing didn’t fly and instead, they’ve begun pushing a music service shortly after shafting all of their customers that bought into their last music service. They’re hoping of course that you don’t notice. If you did happen to notice, Rob Bennett of Microsoft wants you to know that they wanted you to have DRM free music. It was the labels that didn’t want you to have it. As Rob so smoothly put it:

“We want to make it easy and as painless for our customers as possible. We really feel, in the long term, what’s best for people who want to buy music from Microsoft is to move to Zune.”

They’re doing everything they do for you, the consumer. No need to thank them.

The tears in your eyes are thanks enough.

Well, hi there pot! it’s me, kettle!

That’s right folks.  Sony/BMG got busted for installing pirated software on their servers.  The same company that installed rootkits on user’s computers, not to stop pirating, but to stop legitimate copying of owned music are a bunch of thieves themselves.

I guess it takes one to know one.

Oh, and everyone that legally purchased music from the now defunct MSN Music, who has decided to shut down the DRM servers, thus locking you into the same 5 computers for the life of your music. Upgrade your OS or change computers, and kiss your music goodbye.

Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t feel an iota of pity for those that bought into this payment scheme for music they can never own.

I just like this story because any time DRM fails, an angel gets his wings.