With all due respect, you couldn’t be more wrong. DRM is in Zune because: (1) Executives at the 4 major record labels want it; and (2) It will enable Microsoft to lock out competitors.

If you spend $10K on DRM’d content for your Zune and then try to switch to an iPod, you will have to buy the content all over again. If Apple offers you a conversion utility, then Microsoft can sue Apple and you under the anti-circumvention clause of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Result: You are locked into Microsoft.

The primary objective of highly-paid record label executives is not to promote the business; it’s to keep their highly-paid jobs for as long as possible, or at least until they get an even better job. Consequently, they need a BS story to tell stockholders about how they are going to protect existing revenue streams. Since “pixidust” and “magic wands” probably won’t go over too well, DRM is talked up (Incidentally, piracy also serves as a useful excuse for bad numbers). Although, Microsoft, and even many of the record label execs, know that DRM will not protect existing revenue streams, it doesn’t matter; DRM helps self-interested music execs keep their jobs for at least another fiscal quarter and it helps Microsoft lock in consumers while locking out competitors.

Microsoft is dropping PlaysForSure because their business strategy is to become the dominant vendor. Since tech companies view DRM as a way to create barriers to competition, a dominant vendor, such as Apple and Microsoft (at least in aspiration), will always do everything they can to ensure their DRM does not work with anyone else’s. Cases-in-point: (1) Apple’s reaction to the French attempt to open up the iPod to other LEGAL music stores; and (2) Apple’s reaction to RealNetwork’s Harmony; they implied legal action and “upgraded” their software to render Harmony inoperable.

I’ll leave you with one last quote from a Rollng Stones interview of Steve Jobs in 2003: “None of this technology that you’re talking about’s gonna work. We have Ph.D.’s here, that know the stuff cold, and we don’t believe it’s possible to protect digital content…it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock — open every door…So what you have to do is compete with it.”

Clearly, Jobs has changed his mind (or at least his tune) about DRM. That’s not because the PHDs were stupid; it’s because it’s in Apple’s best interest to lock in customers and lock out everyone else.

You can’t share video wirelessly on the Zune. Sharing is limited to audio files and photos.

So, I’m glad you
“take the charitable approach and assume you didn’t mean to say something that sounds incredibly arrogant,…”

As for your other points, I mostly agree; this particular article however is mostly focused on the DRM issue and its effect on the Zune…

Interesting comment you have there though, if only someone *cough* would care to see what the customers think… *cough*

What matters in the end is hardware quality, style, price, and us.

I’m not sure why you think YOU are so important to the Zune’s success. Maybe that’s one of your typos. (Spelling DOES matter!) Did you mean “use” as in “usability”?

Anyway, I’ll take the charitable approach and assume you didn’t mean to say something that sounds incredibly arrogant, and deal with the other things. Yes, hardware quality and style and price do matter, but they’re hardly going to win Zune’s war on the iPod, because the iPod has those things (and it has usability, which Zune lacks from all reports: c’mon, who’s going to be stupid enough to be taken in by a fake scroll wheel!?).

The reason no one in their right mind would be a Zune over an iPod is that Zune’s advantages don’t matter, but its disadvantages DO matter. You can plug your iPod into new cars from practically every major company. You can use it with any major platform easily, and you have fabulous software to go with it on Mac and Windows: iTunes (and probably decent software on Linux, although I haven’t tried it). There are things coming out all the time that ‘integrate with’ or in some way connect to the iPod, but Zune? Nothing. Zune will connect to your Windows box and to other Zunes, and that’s probably it. (If there’s more, there’s not much more.) So there are lots of Windows users out there, but how is that an advantage of the iPod. There aren’t many Zune users, so the network effect doesn’t kick in, and this one feature is practically useless. And even if there *were* lots of other Zune users, is this really the way people want to share music? I doubt it.

Just use some common sense, don’t believe every rumor you hear,

Good advice.

and remember: worst comes to worst, in a week or less Zune will be running Linux as some hackers celebrate and prepare to release it to the public.

But this final word really doesn’t finally have any relevance. How many people will actually install Linux on it. Maybe one tenth of one percent of the users.

If not completely hopeless, Zune is pretty nearly so.

http://www.zuneinsider.com/2006/09/zune_and_drm_or.html

I haven’t seen any “official” information refuting this claim either. While the product is still in its pre-release stage, I believe it’s the perfect time to complain until we get a difinitive answer once and for all, dude.

From what Microsoft has said ’till now it won’t be deleted, it’ll be changed into some kind of shortcut or something…. which is in violation.

It doesn’t matter: deleting it because you think its illegal to share it is just as bad according to CC:

[quote]If a person uses DRM tools to restrict any of the rights granted in the license, that person violates the license. All of our licenses prohibit licensees from “distributing the Work with any technological measures that control access or use of the Work in a manner inconsistent with the terms of this License Agreement.”[/quote]

Hence, forcing the deletion of a music or media file after 3d3p is in violation no matter whether it is hardware or software implemented and whether or not the file itself is actualy modified.

But, to be honest, we probably won’t be able to do it - if we can’t even afford a forum script and can barely pay our hosting fees, 250 USD for a media player isn’t going to come easy for “beneficial” purposes.

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#What_happens_if_someone_tries_to_protect_a_CC-licensed_work_with_digital_rights_management_.28DRM.29_tools.3F

I don’t think deleting a file from the device is a CC violation.
But maybe I should learn how to spell that “law” word right. You never know, it could take a smart lawyer and not a smart hacker to bypass the 3d3p

Spelling of “Lawyer” fixed
bbCode changed to HTML
-CG