Wal-Mart reversal teaches us the masses have might
The masses have spoken.
And Wal-Mart Stores, the nation's largest retailing chain, retreated from a misdirected and unfair policy. Last month, the company informed customers who bought its DRM-wrapped music that it would no longer issue keys to unlock songs. That meant music buyers would no longer be able to move their libraries to new computers or players. On Thursday, the company reversed that decision and said it would continue to issue keys for "the present time," according to Ravi Jariwala, a Walmart.com spokesman.
OK, let's tally these up. By my count this makes the third behemoth company this year to bend its digital rights management strategies to your will. Yes, you the Internet user, consumer, music fan.
I'm not pandering. That's what happened. The pattern was the same in each case. MSN Music was the first to announce that it planned to stop supporting DRM. Then came Yahoo Music, followed by Wal-Mart. Each announced a plan to kill support. Each was criticized. Each caved in.
Customers pointed out the obvious: There was no expiration date on the music they bought.
If nothing else, the lesson here to you--techies and digital music fans--should be that when you go to the barricades, you can make something happen. When you combine voices, the sound is loud enough to force conglomerates to bend their ears. To their credit, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Wal-Mart listened.
Of course, this isn't the end. Microsoft has committed to supporting the DRM keys for three years. What happens in 2011? And when I asked Jariwala how long does "for the present time" mean, he e-mailed this:
"(Walmart.com) will continue to evaluate options and no decisions have been made at this point. In the meantime, we'll continue to offer MP3 downloads through our online music store and will assist with DRM issues for protected Windows Media Audio (WMA) files purchased from Walmart.com."
It's generally recognized as a good thing that Walmart.com switched to MP3s. But as far as the DRM-wrapped music it once sold, the company could still pull the plug on support whenever it wishes.
And what about the services which continue to sell DRM-laden downloads, such as iTunes? Who knows what the future brings, but if Apple ever considers turning off its DRM support, it should make preparations to take care of its customers.
If not, well, then the people will clear their throats once again and make themselves heard.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg.
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If Apple were to stop supporting its own DRM, that would lock all non-DRM-free music I bought from iTunes in place on whatever hardware platform it's currently imprisoned. Right? So, theoretically, if my music collection were extensive enough, I'd never buy another computer, unless I were prepared to have one computer dedicated specifically to music, and I would in that case have to hope that whatever operating system it currently ran never became truly obsolete, as opposed to technically outdated and inconvenient.
But I COULD burn all of those songs to CD, and then re-import them all as .mp3's, and move them onto whatever new computer I wanted, and even re-encode them as .aac, if I wanted to be that anal.
Is that not possible with music purchased from MSN, Yahoo, and Wally-World? I've never bought any there, so I honestly don't know.
As an aside, I'm surprised that computer manufacturers didn't scream bloody murder at the threats to stop supporting DRM. I know people who have music collections so extensive that they have a higher cash value than any computer. They'd be hesitant to purchase a new computer until they absolutely had to, if it meant doing the burn-to-CD process I mentioned above. That would translate to, at a minimum, a delayed sale for some manufacturer. I have no idea if enough people are in a similar music situation to make a palpable difference in sales, but I'm guessing...maybe?
Here's the real issue. If you take all your music and burn them to a CD, then rip those CDs, you aren't going to have MP3s that have any ID3 tags. You'll have hundreds of Songs with absolutely no information attached to them, and you'll have to go in and enter those tags by hand. That is a tedious process at best, odious and reprehensible that we are forced to do this.
The gist is, however, that a vendor that uses DRM has an obligation to support the customer indefinitely (assuming it wasn't stated up-front that it's a rental) since it's necessary to make use of the product that the person paid for. The vendor also needs to provide the mechanism to strip the DRM once the copyright expires (which is not likely, copyright terms are regularly extended to prevent modern media copyrights from ever expiring).
As for removing DRM from iTunes purchased music, the simplest way is as mentioned, burn an Audio CD from them and then re-rip them. Of course there is one MAJOR drawback of doing this, the ID3 tags are not re-imported with the DRM-free tracks that are the product of the re-rip. So basically your tracks with artist/song title/album art/etc. info will turn into "Track 1" by unkown artist. You can manually go in to every track and enter that information but that's a major pain. A better alternative, other than simply buying the original CD or buying from Amazon as mentioned above, is to pay for a simple DRM stripping program. There are lots of them out there, most cost less than $25. I'm sure there are free versions of these programs available too.
Ultimately, I think if you can find the CD on sale somewhere it's worth the buy. Usually they cost a couple dollars more than the downloads, but it saves you the trouble of DRM, and the hassle of having to backup your music to CD-R's or DVD-R's. Plus you get the CD jacket.
For those who have not experienced the "joy" of moving his/her music from one machine to another, go do it. I had to call Wal-Mart to get them to unlock my account twice; otherwise I could not download the license to play the music I bought. So, the use of the DRM server is not without cost: they have to have somebody sitting around to answer the phone and unlock accounts, I guess.
I actually went out to Walmart.com to see if I could get DRM-free versions of the songs I bought before and, as you can imagine, many of them were not being sold on Wal-Mart any longer. I guess when Wal-Mart pulled the DRM plug, some labels pulled their music, too.
I swear, this is one of the most screwed up businesses I've ever seen. Many of us try to do what's right and for what? To get mistreated? To be forced to waste our time? I understand the music industry's concern with piracy, but they've done everything wrong from the outset.
At least things appear to be changing. I for one will no longer buy a DRM-laden music of videos. If that means doing without, fine. It just isn't worth the time and frustration that DRM has caused me.
I like the idea mentioned above, where terminating DRM infrastructure support requires release of a DRM-stripper... Of course, that approach opens up [EVERYONE ELSE using the same mechanisms]. Hmm. Decisions, decisions.
Of course, it MAY take some form of class action suit against some DRM-key maintainer (specifically, resulting in significant payout to past purchasers) before the whole idea really hits the skids -- but just a suggestion: start saving a receipt log for all your DRM-encumbered purchases; it may increase your leverage/refund at some point in the future.
Of course, too much glee is probably premature -- I can think of at least three different approaches (using something resembling PGP) to implement both a user-specific and a vendor-specific DRM-release key that would handle the 'ongoing support' issue without inconveniencing other DRM efforts.
Evolution in progress.