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Microsoft's love of DRM

Microsoft has been in a ton of news lately: they lost their takeover bid of Yahoo in an attempt to garner a better internet strategy and two stories this week pointed out their embracing of Digital Rights Management (DRM), even when such measures can be hostile to their own customers.

The first story is the shuttering of their MSN Music service. It was an attempt to take on the iTunes Music Store and offer paid music downloads. After a couple years of service, they've decided to close down the service but in doing so, they'll turn off the servers that authorize your music tracks so if you ever update your operating system or buy a new computer, your old purchased music files will not play. You would have to buy the songs again using the newer Zune store.

The second story is about NBC shows coming to the Microsoft Zune media player, but with one feature NBC wanted added to the device: the copyright cop. If you buy a NBC show and transfer it to your Zune, a small application will check your Zune for "pirated" shows and movies that weren't purchased from the Zune store, and delete them. It's rumored that this is why the NBC/Apple partnership ended at the iTMS and they removed shows -- because Apple refused to build in this kind of capability.

My takeaway from recent news regarding Microsoft is that they're making a lot of short-sighted decisions in an effort to please large copyright holders, in an effort to build partnerships with studios, but they're forgetting their customers. The iPod and iPhone are fairly locked-down devices and the iTMS sells almost entirely DRM protected content, but it's more popular because the devices and purchasing is easy to do and there's a level of trust between Apple and their customers that Apple isn't going to pull the rug out from under purchasers of music.

Aside from operating systems where they clearly dominate, Microsoft plays second fiddle in a lot of their other businesses. I'm sure there are people on the Microsoft campus that know and understand when MS makes these kinds of customer-hostile decisions to shut down purchased music and delete your content that you will continue to lose customers to other companies, but if MS wants to gain marketshare in any of these fields, they'll have to rethink their strategy. That Microsoft called their version of DRM "Plays For Sure" is the icing on the ironic cake.

(photo from my tour of the Microsoft booth at CES in 2005)

by Matt Haughey May 8, 2008 in News

Comments

I bought a high def monitor earlier this year and learned first hand how hostile Microsoft's DRM really is. Because I had the ability to display high def content from other sources, they revoked my right to play Netflix Watch Now files. Not only have they built their DRM into the media, but they've also built it directly into Vista. If I would have known about this restriction at the time, there is no way that I would have "upgraded" to Vista, but it wasn't until I had spent the money on a new entertainment setup that I learned about the restrictions. think its terrible that they are willing to neuter their own software in order to appease the fat cat studios. Even though I have a high def camcorder, it may as well be worthless because I've had to downgrade my monitor to an analog signal. There are also a number of video sites that are unable to display full screen video because I had to choose between being able to watch Netflx and Media Center content or keeping my high def connection without Window's media support.

Posted by: Davis Freeberg at May 8, 2008 9:30:53 AM

WTF Davis. I have Vista and can do all of those things. Don't chalk up conspiracy theories when incompetance will do.

Back to this article: It'd be a great read if it was true. Microsoft has already gone on record saying this copyright cop 'news' is bogus.

Posted by: tt at May 8, 2008 9:53:42 AM

TT - I'm not making up conspiracy theories. I spoke to someone at both Netflix and Microsoft about this issue and have screen shots of the problem on my blog. If you do a web search for COPP you can learn more about how heinous Microsoft's Hardware DRM really is. Blackfriars Inc went as far as to call it a ticking time bomb for Microsoft.

http://blackfriarsinc.com/blog/2008/01/consumer-discovers-ticking-drm-time

Posted by: Davis Freeberg at May 8, 2008 10:15:32 AM

Hate to blow up the entire article, but Paul Thorott reports that this blockage is NOT being pursued by Microsoft.
http://tinyurl.com/6movyk

Posted by: DAna at May 8, 2008 11:00:51 AM

Vista is DRM infected garbage, because of Microsoft's love of DRM, I am switching to Mac.
Everyone who I know, who has purchaced Vista, has downgraded ( upgraded ) to XP. Microsoft are in trouble, you can`t just ignore you customers!

Posted by: Dario at May 9, 2008 12:37:25 AM

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