Blast From The Past: Oh Look, New Business Models Didn't Require DRM

from the thank-goodness-for-that dept

Sometimes it's fun to look back on predictions from a few years back. lavi d writes in to point out a 2001 Microsoft press release that he came across while looking for something else. The press release touts new DRM technologies coming out of Microsoft, which is amusing if you know anything about Microsoft's history with DRM. But the really key part of the press release was a VP from the record label EMI insisting:

"Nearly all the new media business models require a robust DRM solution to be successful. Microsoft's continued innovation and commitment to quality sound in Windows Media is helping us develop profitable new ways of connecting music fans with the artists they love."

And how did that turn out? Well, as we're increasingly discovering, very few new media business models require any sort of DRM, and in fact, DRM seems to damage business models a lot more than it helps them. And, Microsoft's forays into the space have hardly done very much in helping musicians develop "profitable new ways" to connect music fans to artists.

Filed Under: business models, drm
Companies: emi, microsoft

Microsoft Keeps DRM Servers Alive For Now; Won't Screw Over Own Customers For A Few More Years

from the well,-that's-something dept

For years, we've given examples of how DRM ends up screwing over customers one way or another. One of the most obvious ways is when that DRM requires files to "check in" over the internet to work, and the company that manages the "check in" server takes it down. That's what's Microsoft announced it was doing with its incredibly-misnamed "PlaysForSure" DRM servers back in April. This was, effectively, going back on the terms of the deal they offered to music buyers. Following the outcry in response, however, it appears that Microsoft has reconsidered, saying that it will keep the servers running at least until 2011. So for the 35 people or so who bought into the PlaysForSure system, you have another 3 years to find new DRM-free sources of music.

Filed Under: drm, playsforsure, servers
Companies: microsoft

Would You Buy $630 For $715? Thanks To Microsoft, You Can Make Money Doing So

from the loopholes dept

Just last month, Microsoft announced its desperation plan of bribing users to use Microsoft's search. Basically, if you bought certain products via a Microsoft search, Microsoft would pay you cash back. And, of course, as soon as the cash got involved, it didn't take long for people to find loopholes. Various messages boards are highlighting how this works, but the end result is that people are buying $630 in cash for $715 (via Whitney McNamara), knowing that Microsoft will pay them "cash back" that more than makes up the difference -- in some cases up to $250. So, in that case, the seller of the "cash" ends up making $85, and the "buyer" makes $165. Microsoft, of course, is out the $250. Talk about arbitrage.

Filed Under: arbitrage, cash back, search
Companies: microsoft

Microsoft Seeks Patent On Virtual Graffiti Years After The Idea Is In Use

from the a-little-late-to-the-party dept

theodp points us to a new patent application from Microsoft for the concept of "virtual graffiti" that someone could leave for mobile devices connected to a real geographic area. As theodp notes: "Here's what passes for inventive these days in Redmond: 'Mary, while at Tom's house, may create graffiti on her cell FVG-enabled phone that says, 'Party Here Friday Night!' and make the graffiti available to all her friends. Then any of Mary's friends (with their FVG-enabled devices) passing by Tom's house would become aware of the graffiti associated with the house and be able to view it, thus becoming aware of the planned party.' Microsoft proudly boasts that the technology can also be used to shout 'Subscriber!' to newspaper boys as they pass customers' houses and exclaim 'Great lunch joint!' to those passing by a restaurant."

If that doesn't sound particularly new or non-obvious that's because it's not. We wrote about nearly an identical system that was already in use at Cornell University in August of 2003, more than three years before this Microsoft patent application was filed. Even in writing about that story, we noted that there were a few similar systems already out there and that "people have been talking about such things for ages"). How this could possibly be considered new or non-obvious seems like a reasonable question. Hopefully the patent examiner agrees and rejects this application.

Filed Under: patents, prior art, virtual graffiti
Companies: microsoft

Yahoo-Google Deal Official; Now Can We Talk About Something Important?

from the well,-that's-that dept

Sorry corn farmers, it looks like Yahoo's potential deal with Microsoft has gone away, and Yahoo and Google have finally agreed to a plan that hands off a bunch of Yahoo's search ad inventory to Google, basically admitting that Google is just better at serving the long tail of the advertiser market.

Basically, this means that the search ad market battle is settled, Google has won. Yahoo's mistake all along was trying to play catch up and to build its own Google, rather than focusing on doing something different. Hopefully, Yahoo can now reinvent itself to focus on providing something that's not just a Google competitor, but which actually provides a different value proposition to users. Of course, at the rate Yahoo seems to be bleeding talent these days, that might not be so easy. Plus, of course, the feds are almost certainly going to take up the cry of those corn farmers, and investigate whether or not the deal violates any sort of antitrust rules. That's going to be a major distraction as well. So, rather than focusing on Yahoo's struggles, perhaps it's time to go focus on the next interesting startup. After all, that seems to be what a bunch of Yahoo's employees are doing.

Filed Under: advertising, antitrust, search advertising
Companies: google, microsoft, yahoo

Forget DRM, Microsoft Looks To Build Digital Manners Management

from the mind-your-manners dept

If there's one thing companies should understand by now, it's the idea that restricting people from doing stuff that they want to do tends to backfire, badly. Just look at every attempt to create "DRM." Well, apparently Microsoft is trying to create a different sort of digital restrictions policy: one based on hard-coded "manners." A few folks sent in notice that Microsoft has applied for a patent on a system for "device manner policy" (DMP). Basically, such a DMP system would restrict the use of certain features in certain locations. So, for example, a mobile phone that has the DMP technology might not be able to ring in a movie theater, but would instead shift to vibrate. Or a digital camera or cameraphone would automatically disable the ability to take photos in a museum. Really, this is just another form of DRM, restricting what people can do with the technology they own. While it's nice to think that technology could somehow block out rude uses of devices, the opportunity for problems and abuse seems quite high. Wouldn't we be better off focusing on social norms to get people to learn when it is and is not appropriate to use certain technologies?

Filed Under: digital manner policy, manners, patents
Companies: microsoft

Microsoft Demanding Some Of Immersion's Patent Booty From Sony

from the ah,-patent-law dept

A few weeks back, we wrote about how Immersion was involved in a bizarre lawsuit involving a firm focused on the "teledildonics" market (look it up -- or, actually, you're probably better off not). Immersion, of course, is well known in the tech world for holding a bunch of patents on "haptic" technology, which many people are more familiar with as "force feedback" in devices like video game controllers. Immersion is not afraid to use its patents and has been involved in numerous lawsuits -- with the big one yielding $130 million from Sony for the force feedback controllers used in the PlayStation. The case mentioned a few weeks ago involved a shell firm that Immersion had done a deal with. Since Immersion didn't want to smear its own name by suing companies involved in force feedback sex devices, it basically licensed the legal rights out to this shell company. However, that shell company felt that Immersion owed it some of the $130 million Sony booty.

While the case with the shell company has now been dismissed, Joe Mullin notes an even more interesting case: Microsoft is also demanding a large cut of the Sony settlement money. Here's where things get tricky. Basically, Immersion had sued Microsoft as well for violating the patents. But, as we've seen other companies do, part of the settlement terms between Immersion and Microsoft are that Microsoft would join the patent battle against Sony and get a cut of any settlement money that came out of that lawsuit. In effect, rather than just paying up to license the patent, Microsoft switched sides in the lawsuit.

However, Immersion used some sneaky tricks to skirt around its agreement with Microsoft -- most specifically never referring to its deal with Sony as a "settlement." Thus, it claimed that it doesn't owe a dime to Microsoft (some thanks Microsoft got for paying up, huh?). So now Microsoft has sued, though muddling the whole case is the fact that in filing the lawsuit, Microsoft released some confidential info, which caused Immersion to sue Microsoft as well. And just think, folks, all this money being spent on lawyers could actually have gone into making better game controllers. But who wants to do that when there are more lawyers to pay?

Filed Under: force feedback, haptics, lawsuits, patents
Companies: immersion, microsoft, sony

Microsoft: It's Not The Broadcast Flag, It's A Different Flag

from the well,-that-makes...-um...-no-difference-at-all dept

After certain NBC TV shows wouldn't record on Microsoft's Vista Media Center a few weeks ago, Microsoft admitted that Media Center includes broadcast flag technology, while NBC Universal admitted that it accidentally set the flag. However, now Microsoft is trying to clarify, claiming that it's not actually the broadcast flag that it included, but an entirely different flag, called CGMS-A. NBC Universal concurs, saying that the mistake it made was in setting the CGMS-A flag. Of course... the real question is why does this matter at all? If the impact is identical (Microsoft willing to let TV networks declare a show un-recordable), then what does it matter which annoying copy protection scheme is used?

Filed Under: broadcast flag, cgms-a, dvrs, time shifting
Companies: microsoft, nbc universal

Microsoft Apparently Still Confused About The Long Tail Concept

from the there's-no-shelf-space dept

The concept of "The Long Tail" seems so common to be almost a cliche these days. While it used to be a part of nearly every startup's VC pitch, it's long passed the point where VCs now roll their eyes when they hear about a "long tail" company. However, it appears that plenty of folks are still unfamiliar with the concept. For example, Microsoft seems to be killing off Xbox Live games that aren't performing well, even if they have some audience. Microsoft claims that it's because it's too confusing to find games, but as Chris Kohler points out in the link above, that's a problem of Microsoft's Xbox Live interface -- not the fact that there are too many games. Cutting off the games doesn't make much sense. It doesn't "cost" Microsoft much to keep them on the shelves, and these unwanted games can bring in plenty of revenue in the aggregate. The real problem is that Microsoft needs to fix its UI.

Filed Under: bad interface, long tail, shelf space, video games, xbox, xbox live
Companies: microsoft

Microsoft Gets Out Of Book Search, But Hands Tools Over To Libraries

from the some-good,-some-bad dept

In a somewhat unexpected move, Microsoft has announced that it's abandoning its book scanning project. While Google's book scanning project has received a lot more attention (and lawsuits) for the way it's set up, Yahoo and Microsoft teamed up with the Internet Archive to try to do something similar, though focusing mostly on public domain works and other books where they have the publishers' permission. Microsoft doesn't give an entirely lucid explanation for giving up the project, but it is handing over the scanning systems it put together to its various library partners and hoping they'll continue scanning on their own, saying:

"Based on our experience, we foresee that the best way for a search engine to make book content available will be by crawling content repositories created by book publishers and libraries."

In some ways, this is a stunning quote coming from Microsoft, admitting that a publicly available repository, created by others an which anyone can index, is better than a proprietary and controlled solution. The company is probably correct that it's better to have the content be available to any search engine rather than stuck in a silo, but there's probably much more behind this reasoning -- such as the fact that Google's book scanning project seems to be gaining a lot more traction, perhaps because Google is doing deals with libraries to scan their books for free, while the Open Content Alliance (which Microsoft's project was a part of) charges money to libraries.

Filed Under: book scanning, book search, libraries, openness
Companies: microsoft