Reason #9,358 For Not Buying DRM'd Music: Wal-Mart Shuts Down DRM Servers
from the and-again dept
Following the misguided lead of both Microsoft and Yahoo, it appears that Wal-Mart has decided to turn off its DRM servers, basically screwing over anyone who trusted Wal-Mart to make sure that music bought from Wal-Mart would keep working. What's amazing is that Wal-Mart would do this after seeing the backlash that made both Microsoft and Yahoo eventually back down (with Yahoo even going so far as to offer refunds). Wal-Mart, on the other hand, just told people they have a week to burn their music to a CD and re-rip it -- or they lose it entirely. Obviously, by this point, you should know that buying DRM'd music is a mistake, because you're leaving the music in a situation where the company you bought it from can "turn it off" at some point, but what's more amazing is that Wal-Mart would make the exact same mistake after seeing what happened to both Yahoo and Microsoft.
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Filed Under: drm, servers
Companies: microsoft, wal-mart, yahoo
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Long Live ThePirateBay!
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Re:
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Nowadays, buying anything with DRM is a mistake. Sure DVDs have DRM, but they're not constantly changing it making bricks out of players.
With Blu-ray, unless you buy a PS3 you're never certain if some new DRM scheme will make it impossible to play new Blu-rays.
And even if you think you're safe by buying a PS3, what happens when the PS4 comes out? Do you know for certain that Sony will keep updating the PS3 so you can keep playing new Blu-ray discs? I wouldn't put my faith in Sony to keep doing what does not make it money, especially when not providing updates to the PS3 gives consumers an incentive to buy the PS4.
And all those idiots who buy Unboxed movies or Kindle books are in for a rude awakening. If you buy a DVD or a book, and you treat it well, it will last a long time. Books last centuries. Do you really think the digital DRMed content you buy from Amazon will be usable for that long?
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So who really is going to invest in Sony's Blu-ray with that track record?!
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Actually, this isn't true. Many people, myself included, have had to scrap DVD players because they couldn't interpret the copy protection layer installed on DVDs after 2006.
Luckily for me, Samsung worked with me to replace my DVD player at no cost to me.
On topic, now.
This story just goes to prove how stupid the average consumer is. Even if a company tells its consumers "Use it or lose it", it's still wrong to shaft consumers in this manner.
Corporate America no longer cares about "consumer rights" and it's getting worse by the day. Many consumers, such as myself, who choose not to buy DRM media have no alternative (legally).
I have no problem in purchasing media legally but all this crap regarding DRM is about to push me into the torrent world as, given no choices to me, is my only choice.
The MPAA, RIAA, and ESA should learn from consumers instead of trying to screw us over by treating us like non-paying thieves.
While I do believe much of the media available is overpriced, I am willing to make purchases. Most of the time, I wait until the price drop to do so, which is what every consumer should do.
Instead, they rush out and buy the "latest" thing which does nothing more than fuel DRM'd media.
I am truly getting sick and tired of paying for the activities of others who feel it's in their power to circumvent the law of copyright instead of doing what they should have done in the first place: Not buy the damn thing.
Sorry for the rant, but these stories just irk me because they remind me of just how much I'd like to have compared to what I do have.
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So the solution is to 'pirate' it?
Its also funny how Wal Marts responsibility to their customers just vanishes with the flip of an off-switch. The company isn't even collapsing.
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Re: So the solution is to 'pirate' it?
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Re: So the solution is to 'pirate' it?
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Re: Re: So the solution is to 'pirate' it?
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Not that surprising.
I don't really think it's all that amazing. Wal-Mart has never really been a consumer-conscious company. They make decisions every day that totally ignore what's best for the customer and their image. I haven't seen the numbers regarding their online music sales, but with a company that reports profits in the billions every quarter, I'm sure any hit to their online music store will hardly be noticed. Besides, turning off your DRM servers is a great way to get people who play-by-the-book to purchase the same product again and again. Wal-Mart will never apologize and you can bet they will never hand out any type of refund.
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Re: Not that surprising.
You don't become the dominant retailer by not being a consumer-conscious company.
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Re: Re: Not that surprising.
As for me. I'm the Upper Class, I shop at Target !! :)
Bucky J.
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big DUH
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Re: big DUH
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Like *anyone* concerned about quality is buying MP3's from Wal-Mart....
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Re: Re: big DUH
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The Wal-Mart Way!
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You go to some website (say Walmart) and you put in your credit card info and purchase some songs. Maybe you buy a subscription and have access to a bunch of songs... whatever. The files are somehow tagged and each time you play them they need to be verified by some server out there in the Interwebs thus limiting you to certain devices.?
Am I close?
Not being familiar with purchasing music online, how are these facts expressed to the customer before purchasing music? Is this all stuffed in an endless EULA? because who seriously reads those things and I'm sure 90% of people buying anything from Walmart (no, i can't cite any sources... call it a guesstimate) could barely grasp such a concept.
Don't get me wrong, I can see where I may be coming off as one of those people who doesn't think an artist should be compensated for their work. I wouldn't mind paying for music but it's actually much easier to just get it for free. I really have two options if I wanted to pay for music:
1. Get it online through some pay site (iTunes??) but I don't know anything about these sites other than the fact that I'm going to have give them a ton of info (credit cards, mailing address, etc.), sign up for some plan or pay as I go, and while that would be worth it, I'm still not sure if I have full rights to the music. Can i copy it to multiple devices? Do I have to verify it every time I play it? Most of you already know the answers to these questions but I don't and I don't want to spend the time researching different sites to find out when I could just get the song for free.
2. Go to a store and buy it... That's just ridiculous and I'm not even going to entertain it.
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This person is perfectly willing to pay for what he wants but is unwilling to risk the DRM. With the possibility of the "phone home" servers shutting down, bricking of devices, and security vulnerabilities, why would anyone?
I don't know about you, Mr. Doe, but when I purchase something I like to own that product. It's the same exact reason I don't rent anything.
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I completely agree with the sentiment of not wanting DRM music/video/etc. But I don't agree with stealing it. If you can't get what you want, don't buy or steal and just do without. Using DRM as an excuse to steal is pathetic.
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Maybe I'm small time and don't share thousands of songs but it never seemed worth it fix something that wasn't broken.
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The fact is I'm not really a big music fan, I listen music radio when there's nothing good on the talk stations (usually 3 hours during Rush Limbaugh and 3 hours during Don Imus) and I don't even have an iPod. The question of copying to multiple devices was merely inquisitive as I know there is a large number of people who would look for that capability. I do transfer the media from work to home, would you consider it stealing to make multiple copies? I don't really care.
So sure, I guess I'm a thief but I'm certainly not going to spend 2 hours looking for a pay-as-you-download site so I could download a Led Zeppelin song from 1970 and not have to worry about copying it to my laptop.
Oh, I also prefer to play mp3's in Winamp by just dragging them from one music directory. I don't like having to play them through some ridiculous proprietary app that comes with an online music service. Now I'm not entirely sure that I would have to but as I've already mentioned, I'm not going to take the time to find out.
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I am like you, I don't buy/rent/steal music. I listen to the radio when I am in the car, but I don't buy music. I haven't bought a CD in many years.
I have too many other hobbies to spend money on so music ranks pretty low. If it were cheaper and DRM free, then I would buy. Until then, I will just sit it out.
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But thanks, That's why I picked the handle.
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Once they do that, they'll see business come in droves.
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Re: Uneducated Consumer
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Re: Uneducated....Please GET Educated
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Re: Re: Uneducated....Please GET Educated
1)Pack it up and go home. Frankly, I wouldn't miss anyone that's still producing music...
2)Create an experience for your customer that will be worth paying for rather than trying to sell shiny disks.
As a side thought, If I go on a DRM-free pay site and pay $1(?) for a song by Stevie Ray Vaughan, am I in any way supporting the artist whose music I had the pleasure of listening to?
"There are many ways to BUY DRM-FREE music on the internet."
I find it interesting that, with the exception of Wesley, no one offered a place to get DRM-Free music yet insisted that they are plentiful
As for the rest of your comment, you just paraphrased my comment.
me: ...I don't and I don't want to spend the time researching different sites to find out when I could just get the song for free.
you: You're just being LAZY and using the "It's too complicated" line as an excuse to steal.
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breaking the law
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Re: breaking the law
Additionally, if you actually read the DMCA, you will see that it provides an exemption for fair use:
Section 1201 divides technological measures into two categories: measures that prevent unauthorized access to a copyrighted work and measures that prevent unauthorized copying of a copyrighted work. Making or selling devices or services that are used to circumvent either category of technological measure is prohibited in certain circumstances, described below. As to the act of circumvention in itself, the provision prohibits circumventing the first category of technological measures, but not the second.
This distinction was employed to assure that the public will have the continued ability to make fair use of copyrighted works. Since copying of a work may be a fair use under appropriate circumstances, section 1201 does not prohibit the act of circumventing a technological measure that prevents copying.
Basically, the DMCA creates an idiotic situation where circumvention is allowed in some cases, but the tools required to accomplish the task are illegal.
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Re: Re: breaking the law
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A little misuse of exaggeration, there Mike?
The Wal-Mart email said that "your music and video collections will still play on the originally authorized computer". Hardly sounds like they will lose it entirely.
I know, I know, people change computers or change or reinstall their OS. But that's not what you said ;)
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Was this a subscription service?
Yet people didn't seem to understand what they were paying for. It's like if XM or Sirius went out of business and stopped broadcasting and everyone felt they were entitled to keep the music they used to listen to on their stations. The only difference is that the music subscription services took it further than the traditional broadcast model and allowed you to essentially program your own station and even move it to a (supported) portable player.
The biggest problem with music subscription services is that most customers seemed to believe they owned the music they were downloading. I blame both the customer and the service provider for that misconception.
However, if what's being discontinued isn't a subscription service and people actually paid $1 or song (or whatever) and they are now losing access to them then I agree with most of the sentiment above -- this is bullshit.
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Re: Was this a subscription service?
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You would think the RIAA could use some good will about now and just letting these people who paid for these songs upgrade to DRM free songs for at no cost would be a good first step.
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Making music less valuable...
But don't worry, this will never ever happen to all those other DRM companies -- unlike little fly-by-night mom-and-pop operations like Wal*Mart, the DRM companies are rock-ribbed veterans of commerce and industry, sure to be here for a thousand years. So go on buying your Audible books, your iTunes DRM songs, your Zune media, your EA games... None of these companies will ever disappear, nor will the third-party DRM suppliers they use. They are as solid and permanent as Commodore, Atari, the Soviet Union, the American credit system and the Roman Empire.
Boy, the entertainment industry sure makes a good case for ripping them off, huh? Buy your media and risk having it confiscated by a DRM-server shutdown. Take it for free and keep it forever.
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Re: Making music less valuable...
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Re: Re: Making music less valuable...
As has been noted by many others, burning the tracks to CD and then re-ripping them is basically performing a double lossy encoding, which degrades the sound. Also, you are making the customers perform an annoying task to bypass the DRM placed on the tracks you sold them.
The best method is to find a utility to rip the crap DRM out of the tracks so you don't have to re-encode them. That's how I made a DVD of the video I purchased from Amazon's unBox.
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DRM-less
I don't want to "steal" music either, and I'm tired of having to figure out how to deal with DRM (burn to CD, re-rip, email Apple to figure out the latest bug with iTunes and my library) so I've gone back to BUYING physical CDs.
Enough of this DRM, iTunes, iPod crap. It's become too much work. I just want to listen to the damn music. The small difference in price for a physical CD versus iTunes (14.99 vs. 9.99 for an iTunes album) is well worth the savings in time and frustration.
Screw online music.
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Re: DRM-less
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Musicians vs Record Companies
People keep saying that file sharing is theft. It's no different than borrowing a friend's cd and making a copy of it, only you can have access to millions of copies at a time...
And Piracy isn't theft. Piracy makes a copy, the original is still there. Theft is the removal of the item, the original is gone.
And...the record companies are the ones who get virtually all the money from record sales, not the artists. Musicians get the bulk of their money from tours and paraphernalia. With stores trying to sell cds for almost $20 each while Best Buy and Target have the exact same thing for $12-14, why would you encourage such high prices when you can get it elsewhere for cheaper?
I am one of the many who get their music for free. And all my favorite bands are still touring and going strong even without buying their cd. Where is the incentive to buy when as someone else said, it's so much easier to get it for free?
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Re: Musicians vs Record Companies
Probably not on this blog. :P
No, piracy is not theft. But that doesn't make it any less illegal. Copyright infringement is still a crime, albeit a civil case rather then a criminal one.
And while you'll get lots of support for the 'music should be free, because...' argument round here, I wouldn't try suggesting it to an artist. Even Trent Reznor still sells albums at the end of the day. Recording music at a good level of quality is simply too expensive for it ever to be a 'promotional only' tool.
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Re: Re: Musicians vs Record Companies
You don't read this blog much, do you? ;-)
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Re: Re: Musicians vs Record Companies
To clear up some confusion, acts in violation of the rights conferred by copyright law are both civil and criminal matters, and this has been the case ever since the first US copyright act was enacted in 1790.
For those who keep saying theft is the taking away of a particular thing that denies the owner its use, this is a general description of theft as originally defined under what is known as "common law". In many, if not most, jurisdictions the common law has given way to statutory definitions of theft, and at both state and federal levels its scope has been expanded.
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Re: Re: Re: Musicians vs Record Companies
Jurisdictions have added new crimes such as "theft by swindle", but I'm not aware of any that have changed the basic definition of simple theft.
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Re: Re: Re: Musicians vs Record Companies
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Downloads - It's too complicated and unreliable
Buying CD's at discount stores and garage sales for $1 or $2 each for new or near new albums works out well and you get a interesting variety. If you do not like an album you're only out a dollar and can drop it off at the Sally Anne.
You may not be able to get the latest releases, but most of the new releases are complete dreck anyway.
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Not 1 cent!
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Screw 'em all.
One screws it's people (and the country), the other screws the people.
Time to get rid of them both.
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Seems like..
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Or rather, I guess 'rented'.
I agree with the above though - they basically are stealing from their customers.
Would be interesting to see a class action law-suit on this, to force these companies to maintain these servers, regardless if they want to or not.
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