Comments on: Microsoft ‘civil rights coup’

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 10:34:23 +0000

Good God, what a mess! I can’t imagine how crappy the user experience of using “protected” (read: DRM-infested) files is with these sorts of landmines waiting in the wings. What next, DVDs which render themselves unplayable after a short time? (Oh wait, someone already tried that!)

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 12:48:55 +0000

Yet again. Just Say No To DRM.

Now am I being paranoid in thinking that there’s a small step here to an end goal. Which is that WMP 12 (or whatever) will stop you playing non-DRM files? Or will wrap your non-DRM files in internal DRM?

For evidence I’ll give you the Zune. Non-DRM files copied between Zunes via WiFi have DRM added to them. Even if they are public domain to start with.

I’d suggest just boycotting WMP but some of us have Plays4Sure personal players that depend on WMP to copy tracks on and off the machines. But then we hear that PFS is dead and Zune doesn’t support it.[1]

You gotta love hardware that is made obsolescent by a software upgrade elsewhere in the ecosystem.

[1]Creative Zen Xtra hacked with an 80Gb 2.5″ disk.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 08:45:11 +0000

If you don’t like it, don’t use it.

I don’t even have version 10, and the only bits of 9 that are on my pc are because loser game devs think they need the codecs to display their crappy movies the one time i’m prepared to allow movies to get between me and gameplay.

I’m just hopeful that once this kind of crap starts to interfere in joe average pc user’s everyday use of his pc, that he’ll get pissed off about it and start demanding that it stop.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 02:39:31 +0000

I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of saying this.

As long as there are analog outs on sound cards, and a line-in/microphone in, people can just take a 6in mini stereo cable, plug them together and record the soundrecorder (start/run/ sndrec32 enter) and burn/save/backup the end file however they choose.

Granted, as long as there are much better options like the FairUse4WM program to simplify the process, why bother with the analog loop lol.

*The above is just my opinion. I’m not directing you to attempt anything and in fact I’m only mentioning common knowledge information while poking a laughing finger at the changing world of DRM. If ya do something ‘bad’ with my comments, it’s you who’s liable, not I*

Just my 10 cents,
_-Jile-_