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DRM = Craptastic

Plays for sure? Ahh, not really. <Rant Below>

So I recently moved my main system over to Vista. All the music I've ripped from my CD's play for sure. Those tunes I've purchased from MSN Music and Napster, not so much. DRM at work again. With Windows Media Player 11 under Vista, when I try to play a song purchased from MSN music I'm prompted to claim I already own the song...which I do...and then I'm informed I can't install the MSN Music assistant under IE 7. Thanks. For those tunes purchased with Napster, I'm kindly prompted to install the Napster client software. Thanks again. No way I'm installing that crap software on this clean box. Who knows if it would work anyway?

Sure, Vista is still beta software, but I've already been burnt with the same types of issues under Windows XP. I purchased The Thrills album "Let's Bottle Bohemia" from Napster a couple of years ago. When I paved my box and reinstalled XP I installed Napster again and went to re-download the DRM stuff for all my Napster purchased albums. Everything came back down except The Thrills album and 2 others. Apparently Napster removed those 3 albums from their collection...and...uh...apparently that means mine too.

I hate to beat a dead horse, but this DRM stuff is totally pervasive for the end user. I absolutely believe that the artists and companies producing those artists should be paid for their work. That's why I pay them each time I want music. But DRM at what cost to the user? Simply because I reinstall Windows or move to another PC shouldn't mean I re-purchase music I've already paid for. I'm not your average user. I've got good back-ups. I back up my Windows Media Player license file. Apparently that doesn't matter. Infuriating to me. I guess your average Joe Shmoe user just sucks it up.

So, let me re-assert what I said here, buy a real CD and rip it to your music collection. It's the only way to go for the forseeable future.

UPDATE: Seems Omar feels the same way.

Tags DRM Music Napster iTunes DRM is Crap

posted by John Walker @ 10/31/2006 2:27:00 AM

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DRM = Craptastic

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