http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9926476-7.html

Microsoft handed plenty of ammunition to the anti-DRM crowd on Tuesday by announcing it will no longer furnish authorization keys for songs purchased from the defunct MSN Music service.

For former customers of MSN Music--the service Microsoft operated before closing it in late 2006 and opening Zune Marketplace--August 31 will be the last day that they can move music to different computers. After that, Microsoft will no longer "support the retrieval of license keys for the songs you purchased on MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers," the company said in an e-mail to former MSN Music customers.

It's important to note that the music won't disappear after the deadline. Songs will continue to play on authorized computers. What the announcement means is that former MSN Music customers will risk losing their music libraries if they try to transfer songs to unauthorized computers or swap operating systems after Aug. 31.

There are a couple of ways to safeguard the music but they aren't pretty. Before the deadline, those affected can move songs to computers they plan to own for a while (the songs can be authorized to play on five different PCs). Another alternative is to burn songs to CDs and rerip. This means the loss of sound quality but offers more peace of mind.

Bloggers pounced on the news, writing that the situation illustrated just how anti-consumer that digital rights management is. The point most of them made: whatever hardware the songs are stored on will malfunction eventually, and the owner's music (in a high quality form at least) will be gone forever.

"Ultimately, this serves as a reminder of what DRM really is," wrote Justin Mann at TechSpot.com. It's a "way for companies to control your use of their content. Rather than purchasing, you are renting."

But have you SEEN Titanfall? Enough said. Conversation over.

Because this is definitely an apples to apples comparison.

Because EVERYONE used MSN music.

Why are we still talking about this? You're either a sane free man who wants his consumer rights and ownership respected and buys a PS4, or you're someone who likes to step in shit and get ripped off and slapped around like a child, and you get an Xbone.

It's a done deal, we don't need to keep talking about the Xbone, it's shitty and we know it.

No, it's even worse with the Xbox One, because if / when verification servers are eventually shutdown, you won't even be able to continue playing the games you own until your console breaks. Your discs will just become useless plastic, and that will be that.

Yeah, it's not as if MS is going to let you buy a bunch of games digitally and then one day decide not to support the transfer of your licenses to their new service/hardware. That would never happen.

They shut down 7 years ago. I'm surprised they kept it up for this long. I really don't see the issue. If someone is that upset about their MSN music songs they should just torrent them or something, complaining about a service that shut down 7 years ago really makes no sense.

So you're saying that the cure for DRM is piracy? An interesting position.

HEY ANYONE WANNA GO DISCUSS CHEMTRAIL VIDEOS?

I'm saying that this is a ridiculous thing to compare current DRM policies to.

But I do think that it's OK to torrent something after you've already bought it. The creators already got your money once, I don't see any problem with torrenting it again for personal use if you happen to lose the digital copy of it.

Do Microsoft's current DRM policies differ from the policies for MSN Music in some drastic fashion?

I might be very wrong about your second point but I'm almost certain that "I bought it once so now I can download it from wherever, whenever" is almost exactly the opposite of what DRM is supposed to achieve.

It sucks I guess that they are taking the servers down, but in all fairness, you did have 7 years to back that music up to other media. I think 7 years is an A-OK timeframe to backup your plentiful MSN music purchases.

Now of course I don't know how this would work for games, as those are not that easy to backup when purchased digitally. It is a problem that we might face 10 years from now, but by then who knows what the gaming situation looks like. Gaming 10 years ago looked a lot different than it does now.

That's not quite the story here. This is not a recent development. The MSN Music service was available from 2004 to 2006. It just demonstrates a precedent of Microsoft shutting down DRM authentication servers.

There was no "Well, we're shutting down now, so we'll of course just remove the DRM from all that music that you purchased." Instead, users essentially were told, "You might want to put this music on a computer you think you'll be using for a while, because once that computer dies, so does your music collection."

@spaceinsomniac: The article said you can rip the songs to CD's.

I am not sure what point you're making. Things might be very different ten years from now, I don't think that DRM/the ownership of digital goods will become less of an issue in that timeframe.

@rebgav: I'm making the point that if you know the music service from which you purchased your music shut down then it's in part your responsibility to backup all that music before they pull the plug.

Also as was mentioned, a fledgling music service that barely took off is hardly an apt comparison. They are both DRM but that is where the similarities end really.

From the companion piece to that article back in the day;

Bennett defended Microsoft. He said the company never wanted DRM on its songs.

"Had we had the ability to deliver DRM-free tracks at the time, we absolutely would have done that," Bennett said. "We talked to the labels at the time about that. As a company, we have continued to push for this. Zune has a subset in their catalog of DRM-free MP3s. Now, the industry is making progress. The labels are understanding the downside of DRM when its used the way they wanted to use it, they end up punishing the users who bought music legally more than those who want to circumvent the system."

Bennett added that Microsoft believes in protecting intellectual property, but the company also wants people to enjoy their media without unreasonable restrictions.

"No one ever foresaw being in this situation," Bennett said. "It's not something we like to do. We want to make it easy and as painless for our customers as possible. We really feel, in the long term, what's best for people who want to buy music from Microsoft is to move to Zune."

Good to see that lessons were learned and that history doesn't just repeat itself, tragically, without rhyme or reason.

Has anything been said about all the digital indie games that are currently on the 360? I bet whatever happens to those in 5 years time will be indicative of what will happen to the One's digital games.

That's not going to be an option when the 360 servers shut down, though you'll only be losing the games that you bought digitally. All Xbox One games are digital games as far as the DRM is concerned, so when that hardware ceases to be relevant you'll only lose all of the games that you bought for the system. Of course, there's the chance that MS carries all of your licenses forwards (not the case with the 360) and that they'll always carry the full library of games and always make them available for download and local play rather than some onlive/gaikai remote play solution but that's a whole lot of baseless speculation.

You can't back up the music when it has DRM. That's the whole point. If MSN Music was simply a download service without DRM, then yes, you should back up your music files. But DRM makes those files useless on non-authorized computers. Burning a CD is an insane solution because it wastes a CD, and you degrade the quality in the re-encoding process.

It's even worse with Xbox One.You can't burn a game to a DVD and re-rip it. So when Microsoft shuts down the Xbox One DRM servers, all your games become useless.

@floomp: Yah that would suck but at this point it's a highly hypothetical when and if situation. I sure hope it doesn't happen, but if it does it will be interesting to see potential legal ramifications that might emerge as a result of it.

At a loss in sound quality, and even then only if you owned a CD burner. And I didn't mention CDs, because that won't apply to the Xbox One. Be it 10, 15, or 20 years from now, once MS takes down their Xbox One verification servers, there will be no backup discs.

On the other hand, what if MS said this: "While we are committed to keeping costs low by fighting piracy through game verification, we also care about property ownership and game collectors. Once the console generation has come to its end, we will absolutely deactivate the disc verification and allow users to play their discs and digital downloads offline. As a matter of fact, it's in the publisher agreement, which means that it will also apply to all 3rd party titles. If the game requires cloud computing or is multiplayer only, those games will of course no longer work, just as multiplayer no longer works in original Xbox titles. Other than that, what you buy is yours to keep and use forever."

The closet anyone can pry out of Microsoft is "That’s certainly something we would not do. That’s not the way the system is designed. It’s designed for flexibility." And of course, it's surrounded by "We haven’t even started this generation, so it’s kind of early to talk about the end of the generation." and "let’s get the system out there first." Not a firm "absolutely not" and not even a flat "no". And even if you do think of that as a promise, it's not as if everything MS says actually happens--which is also true of Sony or any gaming company--but not having a plan in place about what happens at the end of the console's lifespan is NOT a good sign.

You're kidding, right? Someone in an important position in micorosoft actually said that?

Yeah, cause nobody wants to know this stuff before they drop 1/2k on a system.

I disagree that it's hypothetical. History has clearly shown us that all DRM services will shut down, it's only a matter of when. It's clear why: companies don't like maintaining servers in perpetuity for products they no longer support. The problem is that Microsoft is expecting us to trust them, they want us to think that their DRM service will be different. They say that in the middle of a field of dead, forgotten DRM services, including a couple of their own.

So the burden of proof is on Microsoft and Xbox One proponents. And the quality of proof required is enormously high because of this history.

Steam.

Gee, another service who will "eventually shut down servers and cause consumers to lose access to purchases."

Microsoft gave MSN music purchasers seven years in which to download and backup their purchases.

At some point the telegraph wires have to be replaced by telephone wires. At some point MSN Music servers have to be replaced by servers supporting any one of millions of modern services.

Two years, you might notice that the articles are old (if you read the articles.) Of course, they could have rolled those licenses into the Zune store but that would have been crazy because... something. Also, backing up your purchases would have been a moot point because the DRM system MSN Music used was an authentication check-in every session.

Steam has divulged its future plans to strip the DRM from your library of games if they are forced to shut down. It's like, they have a plan and they tell you about it.

At any point I can take my SNES out of the closet and play some Super Mario World without buying another copy. I can also play plenty of games that are not currently available for any digital download service, due to anything from licencing issues to publishers going out of business.

At some point, all physical discs will be replaced by digital media, and it will happen without violating my property rights.

@mlarrabee: Steam. Gee, another service who will "eventually shut down servers and cause consumers to lose access to purchases."

Indeed. Steam suffers from many of the same problems. But that doesn't mean it's okay for Microsoft to do similar or worse things.

Microsoft gave MSN music purchasers seven years in which to download and backup their purchases.

I think previous posts have already addressed this, but you can't back up DRM-encumbered files. You'd only have a point if MSN Music was a download service that gave you DRM-free files. DRM is designed specifically to prevent freely backing up files.

At some point the telegraph wires have to be replaced by telephone wires.

You can upgrade the wires as much as you like. Purchased goods shouldn't depend on calling home just to be able to use them.

Fallacies, fallacies everywhere.

Major Nelson was asked whether or not something like this would happen to Xbox One games in that Reddit interview, and he said that it would never happen. I don't think it will either, the outrage would be on an unprecedented scale that isn't even remotely comparable to this MSN Music thing.

You know they already did this with the original Xbox. You can't download any of the old DLC (not that there was much of it) anymore.

Surprised nobody is picking up on that.

Steam would only shut down if Valve went under, Xbox services are not linked to Microsoft's lifespan in the same way, are they now?

@sooty@spaceinsomniac@rebgav: Not my Halo 2 maps! Say it ain't so!

I'm not buying any more XBLA or PSN games until the new consoles launch, and even when they do I will not be buying an Xbox One until we do get their concrete details on how the DRM and verification will work in the future. This isn't negotiable, if they can't tell me whats going to happen to the verification on both the 360 and One I won't take that leap of faith.

What I definitely won't do is nitpick a company for mistakes made in 2006, and paint that as damning evidence of future plans with the Xbox One. I think Microsoft thinks a lot of different things about their audience, but they can't honestly believe that the community would just accept that their games will become useless at the end of The Xbox One's lifetime. In the year 2020+ I would imagine the requirements to keep an online verification service up would be something that could be done with minimal effort compared to today.

Oh God, the digging for eeeevil shit on MS is reaching critical mass.

Guess what dudes? One day the PS3 section of PSN will shut down, and you won't be able to download or play Journey. GRAB THE PITCHFORKS, LADS! Because this isn't about MS, it's about "first sale doctrine" and "consumer rights", right guys?

Right? Hello? G...guys?

Yeah, who on Earth would want to listen to music that's more then 7 years old?

Plays4Sure was an interesting vendor neutral initiative pushed by Microsoft. If music vendors and hardware manufacturers matched the specs then any "Plays4Sure music" can work on "Plays4Sure player". It was actually working well until Apple came along with the iPod. Microsoft overacted abandoned Play4Sure and because they were bringing out a new product line named (drum roll) Zune. The rest is history.

I'm not defending the DRM in Plays4Sure but only pointing out that Microsoft easily screws over customer and abandons partners when they believe they can make a move. The vendors and partners that backed Plays4Sure are dead or went MP3, Microsoft floundered with Zune, while Apple danced away with the digital market anyway.

Nothing last forever right? and we should all know that, we are adults and young adults and we should know that by now right?

The "next-gen" hasn't even been released, yet ppl are raging/whining about what might happen 10-20yrs down to line to games and what may or may not be supported....

if your NES, SNES, Sega genesis, Sega CD, 32X, Saturn, Dreamcast, N64, PS1, PS2, original Xbox...... if these electronic items still work after you left them to collect dust in your parents house, then fine...... but just like my Dad, you can't really complain that your favorite 8-track tape doesn't work when its been rotten away it in a basement 40+ years.....

It's the internet.

Predicting the future is all it does.

Though its quite funny to see MS E3 'scandals' popping up as news items in the past few days.

@maddman60620: according to James Bond Diamonds are Forever.

There was a MSN Music?

The main difference is that you can still play downloadable games offline, as long as the hardware keeps working. You're right that the inability to back up downloadable games once the servers go offline is a problem, but trying to paint the outrage at the Xbox One as hypocritical is disingenuous, since it ramps up those restrictions and makes them apply even to disc-based games.

Right. Nothing lasts forever, but the more points of failure a product has, the higher chance it has of failing sooner. Don't build in extra points of failure when you can help it. That's a basic engineering principle which DRM shamelessly violates.

There is no way there were getting requests for MSN Music anymore.

@floomp:

We have no idea if digitally purchased games will be subject to a check in. In fact, it only makes sense that games installed via physical media (a disk) would require it, while digital downloads won't since they can't be moved from one system to another.

I'll bet you 5 bucks that this is exactly how it'll work, and that all this outrage is for nothing.

@thetenthdoctor: The system is subject to a 24 hour check-in period. If you do not check in you cannot play games. This isn't a conspiracy theory, it's a feature of the console.

Perhaps digital games will have different restrictions but as all games are now essentially just a license tied to your profile it doesn't really make sense that the method of purchase would dictate the features and restrictions. As MS haven't said that digital games won't be affected by the authentication check-in it seems silly to assume it.

They also didn't immediately announce there was no used game fee, that you can share with 10 friends, that your 360 can pass through HDMI, and several other things. I think we've established at this point that Microsoft is godawful at explaining the features of this new system.

It makes perfect sense that digital games won't require a check in, especially since there's already a system in place on 360 that registers your digital content to the console it was purchased on. If I have no Internet connection I can play my downloaded Rock Band songs just fine, but if I take my HDD to another console without an Internet connection, the hashes don't match and I can't. Once I connect the new console to the Internet, it sees that they're legitimately purchased files and allows me to play them.

That's the part I'm laughing about- the fact these same restrictions are already in place on the 360, but people are just now freaking out now that they're making it slightly more aggressive on the XB1. Also don't forget that MS has a very easy license transfer tool on their website that lets me move all my content from one box to another, which I've used twice when replacing a console or HDD.

Your digital purchases on the 360 could not be shared among a 10-person group, it seems to me that to include your digital purchases in a shared library for the Xbox One they'd need to be authenticated in the same way as a disc-based install. In fact, if you can sign in and download your games to any system it would suggest that the games are likely to require a check-in through your profile on a regular basis to prevent you from simply sharing your games outside of your group by handing out your login credentials so that others could download your library. As MS have said that access to games outside of your home console is subject to an hourly check-in it seems likely that all games would be handled the same way.

I don't see the potential for digital purchases to be DRM-free while disc-installed games are locked up. That doesn't seem plausible. Even if that were the case, it doesn't address the issue of what happens to those disc-installed games when they can no longer be authenticated, in that scenario people are still left with a lot of useless, expensive plastic discs instead of games.

@rebgav:

Same thing that happened to all the SNES cartridges with bad batteries and ROMs- play them on a PC. By the time any of this amounts to anything close to reality (are we really arguing about not being able to play Madden 2013 in the year 2025?), PCs will be powerful enough to run XB1 emulators and crack the disc encryption. No biggie.

@floomp: DRM isn't going away, games, music, movies, & all forms of media are going to find ways to keep getting paid off their work so they can keep working..... DRM has gotten alot better since my college days when the entertainment industry was in a big panic over what to do(and back then I wasn't always paying for the media I got)... an always online every 24hrs in a most always connected world isn't that demanding and if 20+ yrs later I'm not able to play watchdogs or titianfall.... I guess the age 50 me will be S.O.L if I even still care about those titles......

if you want to see DRM at its worst google Sony's ROOTKIT. as long as it doesn't go that far I'm kinda ok with it..

So you're saying that the cure for DRM is piracy? Interesting position.