Saturday, September 27, 2008

Wal*Mart Says F' You To America...Again

Wal*Mart is shutting down it's DRM music servers which will likely be a surprise to many early adopters who won't be able to use those files in the future.

From the BoingBoing article:
Hey suckers! Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading
MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they're repaying your
honesty by taking away your music. Unless you go through a bunch of
hoops (that you may never find out about, if you've changed email
addresses or if you're not a very technical person), your music will no
longer be playable after October 9th.

But don't worry, this will never ever happen to all those other DRM
companies -- unlike little fly-by-night mom-and-pop operations like
Wal*Mart, the DRM companies are rock-ribbed veterans of commerce and
industry, sure to be here for a thousand years. So go on buying your
Audible books, your iTunes DRM songs, your Zune media, your EA games...
None of these companies will ever disappear, nor will the third-party
DRM suppliers they use. They are as solid and permanent as Commodore,
Atari, the Soviet Union, the American credit system and the Roman
Empire.

Don't pay for digital music unless it's DRM free! I can't seem to
drive the point home enough. Download your music for free until the
recording industry comes to a consensus on a standardized method of appropriately priced DRM-free
delivery. Amazon and Google are making a good push, but not all of the record labels are onboard still. Force the record labels to conform; do not bend to thier will.

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