Members blue2blue Posted December 16, 2006 Members Share Posted December 16, 2006 Looks like at least ONE consumer has bought a new Zune... DRM is "too complicated" - just rip CDs, says Bill Gates By Adam Turner Saturday, 16 December 2006 Even Microsoft founder Bill Gates finds it easier to "just buy a CD and rip it" than grapple with the copyright protection used by online music stores. Gates confessed to a round table of prominent bloggers that "no one has done it right" when it comes to Digital Rights Management. This is despite Microsoft recently creating yet another DRM format for it's new Zune MP3 player. Gates went on to say Digital Rights Management "causes too much pain for legitimate buyers" trying to distinguish between legal and illegal uses. He declined to elaborate on how Microsoft would address this. Gates' comments come as major record labels experiment with selling MP3s online without copyright protection. EMI is the latest to start selling MP3s without Digital Rights Management, with Britain's EMI Music offering tracks from singer Norah Jones and rock band Relient K - via Yahoo!'s online music service. DRM-less music downloads are also a significant threat to Apple. Music sold with non-iTunes DRM, such as PlaysForSure or the new Zune format, can't be copied to an iPod unless the DRM is stripped. An unprotected MP3 can be imported into iTunes and copied to an iPod, creating competition for Apple's iTunes store. ITWire My personal take: This once, on this issue, Bill is dead right. The only DRM protected download album that I've bought -- THE ONLY one -- will no longer play in my "PlaysForSure" (!) player and will not even play in the DRM-savvy MusicMatch Player -- and I bought the album THROUGH the MusicMatch player from their online store! ("PlaysForSure" is, of course, the first DRM that Bill & Co came up with and sold the indie player makers and a lot of consumers on. But when MS decided to get into the HW market, they came up with a whole new, completely proprietary DRM that shuts EVERYONE else out, just like Apple did with the iPod. I expect Vista to incorporate the worst me-tooisms from OS X, too. ) By contrast, I bought thousands of unprotected, very high quality LAME-encoded VBR Mp3s from the old eMusic (they're still in biz but its much more expensive now -- still much cheaper than the rest, though!) and I've never had any problems. And, while the 160 (ABR) kbps WMAs MusicMatch sells (and stream through their subscription service which I mostly like very much) sound pretty ok, considering, and are typically better than typical 128 kbps MP3s, WMAs, and AACs... they noticeably do not come up to the quality of a full-VBR MP3. (They are, however, like AACs, much smaller for a given amount of "fi.") One thing that is striking: Bill isn't afraid to take deadly aim at his own foot and knowingly shoot. He's had a long and interesting streak of savaging some of his own products when they offended him. I'll give him that much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Alndln2 Posted December 16, 2006 Members Share Posted December 16, 2006 Originally posted by blue2blue One thing that is striking: Bill isn't afraid to take deadly aim at his own foot and knowingly shoot. He's had a long and interesting streak of savaging some of his own products when they offended him. I'll give him that much. So far the clear message to me is, avoid Vista/Intel/Apple like the plague. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted December 17, 2006 Author Members Share Posted December 17, 2006 Well... I'm taking a wait and see attitude with Vista... I'm gonna wait and see how long I can do without it. But, seriously, I do business database dev (among other things) on Windows platforms so, eventually, I'll have to bite the bullet on that one. (And, actually, I do have to give props to Intel on the Pentium M in my laptop. It's been a swell little machine.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Alndln2 Posted December 17, 2006 Members Share Posted December 17, 2006 Originally posted by blue2blue I do have to give props to Intel on the Pentium M in my laptop. It's been a swell little machine. Nothing against the actual chips Intel makes, but unlike AMD boards, you won't have the option to disable DRM in bios, and that will be equally the case with Apple/Intel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted December 17, 2006 Author Members Share Posted December 17, 2006 That's certainly their intent. I was thinking that the DRM in the Apple-specific Intel chips had already been busted... or was that just a probably prophetic dream? I'm not morally opposed to DRM -- if it doesn't get in the way or degrade the product... and, of course, that's usually the rub. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted December 17, 2006 Members Share Posted December 17, 2006 I know exactly what you mean. I have no problem with DRM done right. At least I don't think I do, having never seen it done right Anyone else find it interesting that IK Multimedia and BIAS went away from dongle protection and back to validation over the web? Hmmm... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members tamoore Posted December 17, 2006 Members Share Posted December 17, 2006 Yea, I decided after the first time I bought DRM music online that I'd never do it again.... It's way too restrictive. It's silly to assume that people would pay for the 'benefit' of something so restrictive, when anyone who already has an internet connected PC and a little know-how can get the entire discography of practically any artist for free..... I will buy and rip CD's until which time music can be downloaded without any DRM restrictions.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author MikeRivers Posted December 17, 2006 CMS Author Share Posted December 17, 2006 Originally posted by blue2blue Even Microsoft founder Bill Gates finds it easier to "just buy a CD and rip it" than grapple with the copyright protection used by online music stores. This will accomplish a few things. First, it will get the publisher paid what he's due, and second, it will give the consumer the flexibility (which is his right according to the Home Recording act) to make copies in the format appropriate for his players. Also, assuming the buyer keeps the CD, it will give him an "archive" copy that he can go back to if he loses his "playing" copies. However, it also leaves the door open to distribute copies that he's not authorized ot distribute, and that's the whole problem that DRM attempts to solve. Maybe some day they'll get it right. While there isn't much of a chance of that, it's probably greater than the chance that all purchasers of music will respect the copyright and only copy within the law. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted December 17, 2006 Author Members Share Posted December 17, 2006 Originally posted by Anderton I know exactly what you mean. I have no problem with DRM done right. At least I don't think I do, having never seen it done right Anyone else find it interesting that IK Multimedia and BIAS went away from dongle protection and back to validation over the web? Hmmm... Yep. I certainly don't mind the occasional challenge-response on install. (Keep those reg keys! My reg key file has saved me a bunch of times when a new version can't/won't read the old ver's reg info.*) I've pretty much decided a product would have to be truly revolutionary/groundbreaking/gotta have (and cheap!) before I'd buy into the dongle nightmare. When I first read about iLok it sounded like a reasonable compromise... but the more I read -- and the more horror stories I read -- the more I decided to simply skip over iLok-bound products in my shopping. ____________ *The exception to this tolerance is getting to be where publishers want you to supply the install disk from the OLD version to install the upgrade. One version back, OK. That's probably around here somewhere. But Microsoft (!) needs to have the ENTIRE CHAIN of upgrade disks back to the original full version for some of its upgrade installs. MS-Access is one. It's f---ing insane. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Super 8 Posted December 17, 2006 Members Share Posted December 17, 2006 Just buy the damn song online so you feel like you're contributing something to the artist and then delete it and download a high bit rate copy off of gnutella. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted December 17, 2006 Members Share Posted December 17, 2006 This reminds me of the people who bought retail versions of software for conscience and support reasons, then downloaded a crack so they wouldn't be stuck in the middle of a gig with "Please install CD for verification" message. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.