[Infowarrior] - Microsoft to nuke MSN Music DRM keys

[Richard Forno]

DRM sucks redux: Microsoft to nuke MSN Music DRM keys

By Jacqui Cheng | Published: April 22, 2008 - 04:08PM CT

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080422-drm-sucks-redux-microsoft-to-n
uke-msn-music-drm-keys.html


Customers who have purchased music from Microsoft's now-defunct MSN Music
store are now facing a decision they never anticipated making: commit to
which computers (and OS) they want to authorize forever, or give up access
to the music they paid for. Why? Because Microsoft has decided that it's
done supporting the service and will be turning off the MSN Music license
servers by the end of this summer.

MSN Entertainment and Video Services general manager Rob Bennett sent out an
e-mail this afternoon to customers, advising them to make any and all
authorizations or deauthorizations before August 31. "As of August 31, 2008,
we will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the
songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional
computers," reads the e-mail seen by Ars. "You will need to obtain a license
key for each of your songs downloaded from MSN Music on any new computer,
and you must do so before August 31, 2008. If you attempt to transfer your
songs to additional computers after August 31, 2008, those songs will not
successfully play."

This doesn't just apply to the five different computers that PlaysForSure
allows users to authorize, it also applies to operating systems on the same
machine (users need to reauthorize a machine after they upgrade from Windows
XP to Windows Vista, for example). Once September rolls around, users are
committed to whatever five machines they may have authorized‹along with
whatever OS they are running.

The news will likely upset a number of Microsoft's customers, who bought
music from MSN Music before the company launched the Zune Marketplace and
decided to ditch the old store. Microsoft's decision to turn off the MSN
Music authorization servers serves as a painful reminder that DRM ultimately
severely limits your rights. Companies that control various DRM schemes, as
well as the content providers themselves, can yank your ability to play the
content which you lawfully purchased (and now, videos) at any moment‹no
matter what your expectation was when you bought it. Some Major League
Baseball fans learned this the hard way last fall.

Bennett insists that MSN Music keys are, in fact, not yet expiring.
Technically speaking, that's true‹if I authorize one of my PCs, never get
rid of it for the rest of my life, and never upgrade its OS, I will be able
to play my tracks forever. But as some of our readers note, this
technicality is not rooted in reality‹the authorizations will now expire
when the computer does, for whatever reason. DRM-free music may be the new
hotness these days, but people who bought music before the record industry
began to see the light are still stuck with their DRMed music.

Of course, MSN Music customers do have one other option: burning all of
their music to audio CD and then re-ripping them back to the computer as
MP3s, sans DRM. But that's a lossy, lousy solution.