Microsoft Zune will violate Creative Commons licenses

[pultneytooner]

Friday, September 15, 2006
Microsoft Zune will violate Creative Commons licenses
The new Microsoft Zune player (their soi-disant "iPod Killer") applies DRM to all the files you move onto it, even the Creative Commons-licened music. The problem is that CC licenses prohibit this. What's more, CC licenses are machine-readable and could, theoretically, be detected by Microsoft, if they cared enough about copyright to ensure that they were adhering to the license policies set out by creators.

..."There currently isn't a way to sniff out what you are sending, so we wrap it all up in DRM. We can’t tell if you are sending a song from a known band or your own home recording so we default to the safety of encoding. ..."

Stupid M$! While I don't listen to music with Creative Commons Licence, I can see who does...http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b104/voltarol/yucky.gif

[MadPict]

Zune’s Big Innovation: Viral DRM


Now that Microsoft has released some hard facts about Zune we can finally begin to sort out how much of an impact the product might have on the digital music market. For weeks we’ve been hearing rumors about how Zune’s wireless capabilities will be used to enable new types of music sharing and discovery. It’s the one feature that could potentially set Zune apart from the iPod.

Unfortunately Zune’s wireless music sharing is turning out to be one of those features that seemed better when it was just a rumor. While Zune users will be able share music with friends, there’s a catch (isn’t there always). As Jim noted earlier, recipients of shared songs will only be able to listen to them three times or for three days, whichever comes first. It sort of sounds like a really bad tire warranty.

Zune accomplishes this amazingly stupid feat by wrapping shared music in a proprietary layer of DRM, regardless of what format the original content may be in. If Microsoft’s claims are to be believed, this on-the-fly DRM will be seamless and automatic - which must be some kind of first for Microsoft.

What Microsoft has created is a new form of viral DRM. Zune will intentionally infect your music with the DRM virus before passing it along to one of your friends. After three listens the poor song dies a horrible DRM enabled death. Talk about innovation.

www.medialoper.com (http://www.medialoper.com/hot-topics...ion-viral-drm/)

[Bobinovich]

Aaarrrrggh! If that's not a perfect reason to avoid Zune like the plague then I don't know what is. There's a big market waiting for anybody who can remove DRM from media files!

[Niall Fernie]

There's a big market waiting for anybody who can remove DRM from media files!
Already done with FairUse4WM.

Microsoft are trying to shut them down (http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/08/microsoft-now-patching-for-fairuse4wm-1-2/). Fun and games in the DRM world :)

[Bobinovich]

Already done with FairUse4WM.

Microsoft are trying to shut them down (http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/08/microsoft-now-patching-for-fairuse4wm-1-2/). Fun and games in the DRM world :)

LOL should have checked first - it seems that any new copyright technology can be bypassed these days if you know where to look.