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Walmart Caves On DRM Removal
Posted by
kdawson
on Friday October 10, @08:33AM
from the just-kidding dept.
from the just-kidding dept.
cmunic8r99 writes in with an email he received from walmart.com yesterday evening about the pending shutdown of their DRM services (which we discussed a while back). Walmart has reconsidered and won't be shutting off its DRM servers after all. They are still moving to an all-MP3 store, but won't break all the DRMed music its customers have already downloaded; this because of "feedback from the customers."
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Wal-Mart Ends DRM Support 231 comments
An anonymous reader writes "So, you thought you did well to support the fledgling music industry by purchasing your tracks legally from the Wal-Mart store? Well, forget about moving these tracks to a new PC! Since they started selling DRM-free tracks last year, there's no money to be made in maintaining the DRM support systems, and in fact, support is being shut down. Make sure you circumvent the restrictions by burning the tracks to an old-fashioned CD before Wal-mart 'will no longer be able to assist with digital rights management issues for protected WMA files purchased from Walmart.com.' Support ends October 9th."
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Wal-Mart (Score:5, Insightful)
Only did this so that people wouldn't sue them.
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Re:Wal-Mart (Score:5, Insightful)
this because of "feedback from the customers."
Only did this so that people wouldn't sue them.
You say tomato, I say fruit. Whatever.
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Re:Wal-Mart (Score:5, Funny)
Tagged: suddenoutbreakoflawsuits
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Re:Wal-Mart (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Wal-Mart (Score:5, Insightful)
What's your point? Walmart was looking out for their bottom line? You don't really think Walmart is in business because they get warm fuzzy feelings selling cheap shit to cheap people, do you? A lawsuit would have been an expensive waste of time for everybody involved, and they almost certainly would have lost. It was clearly in Walmart's best interest to avoid it.
That's the way it's supposed to work.
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Re:Wal-Mart (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Wal-Mart (Score:5, Funny)
If these are in the form of a 'vest'....I think you'll find a ready made market over there in the middle east. Heck....make it voice activated:
LaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLaLa....BOOM!
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Re:Wal-Mart (Score:5, Insightful)
Horse shit. Walmart spends more on toilet paper for their in-store restrooms in a month than a lawsuit over this would have cost them. Plus I'd be willing to bet that there is fine print in the user agreement for all those DRMed tracks somewhere that says words to the effect of "we can turn it off any time with a few days notice and its your problem not ours".
It probably really was customer feedback and the fact that this was making Walmart look bad. Bad press is far more damaging than some piddly ol' nickel and dime lawsuit.
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Re:Wal-Mart (Score:5, Informative)
Walmart spends more on toilet paper for their in-store restrooms in a month than a lawsuit over this would have cost them.
No, because they would have likely lost the lawsuit and the judge would have done one of two things:
1. Forced them to pay compensation to the people who bought the music.
2. Forced them to escrow money to keep the servers running.
Add in lawyer fees (plaintiff and defendant), and it is clear that they should just take #2 without the fight.
Plus I'd be willing to bet that there is fine print in the user agreement for all those DRMed tracks somewhere that says words to the effect of "we can turn it off any time with a few days notice and its your problem not ours".
I guarantee that is in there somewhere. But that doesn't make it enforceable.
It probably really was customer feedback and the fact that this was making Walmart look bad.
It was probably that, too. Not everything is black and white :) The added publicity from a lawsuit would have been detrimental as well.
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Presumably... (Score:5, Insightful)
... they have a list of who bought which track. Wouldn't it be simpler to just send them non-DRMed copies of things they've already bought? At the very least, they could offer a discount for people re-buying tracks in a non-DRMed format.
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Re:Presumably... (Score:5, Interesting)
They do not have the rights to take such actions as you propose. Only Apple/iTunes was smart enough to get that written into their contract.
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Re:Presumably... (Score:5, Informative)
the cheapest short term solution to keep their customers happy is just to leave the DRM servers up.
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Re:Presumably... (Score:5, Insightful)
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DMCA exemption (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:DMCA exemption (Score:5, Informative)
I just looked at the legalese from 2006, and came up with the following:
Sound recordings, and audiovisual works associated with those sound recordings, distributed in formats that have become obsolete and that require access to a central server as a condition of access, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of preservation or reproduction of published digital works by the original accessing entity. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine, system or service necessary to authorize the perceptible of a work stored in that format if a central server is no longer provided to authorize such perceptible./quote
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The real price of DRM (Score:5, Interesting)
For consumers, living in constant doubt of their content. For providers, servers that they will have to run, like, forever. And the admins who maintain them.
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Now, if we can get off Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
Hopefully they can pull their web developers' collective head out of their collective ass and make a web store that works on something other than internet explorer and windows.
Seriously, is this 1995 or something?
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Whoops! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now *this* is good news.
Why? Because you can bet that Wallmart execs are not at all happy about having to pay for and run a bunch of servers that are no longer making them any money. You can bet that just opened their eyes to the downsides of DRM, and that some people at the top are now asking the music labels some tricky questions, namely "how long are we supposed to keep paying to run these damn things now?".
Wallmart will not want to be left in this position again, and I can see this causing them to put some real pressure on the music labels to drop DRM.
It also means that Wallmart, Apple and Amazon are all pushing for non DRM music. All together that's some pretty hefty leverage!
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Re:Feels like a Scooby-Doo ending. (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you seriously think the DRM servers will be running in 20 years? No way.
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Re:Feels like a Scooby-Doo ending. (Score:5, Insightful)
All this means is that they will wait another year or maybe two before shutting down the DRM servers. They will in the end, there is no doubt.
Do you seriously think the DRM servers will be running in 20 years? No way.
While I'm in agreement, Walmart could certainly use that year or two in order to attempt to convince the labels to allow Walmart to remove the DRM from users' purchases. I think it'd be in their interest: they'd be able to shut down the DRM servers, they wouldn't take a big PR hit, and this episode would be much less likely to affect future music sales. Walmart is certainly willing to use their leverage to squeeze suppliers, and they probably have enough leverage with the labels to at least give it a try.
Would they get anywhere? Hell if I know.
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Re:HUH?? (Score:5, Funny)
Turn off the DRM servers, transfer the file to another machine and listen to it again.
Listen to the windows error message sound.
Which sounds better?
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Re:HUH?? (Score:4, Informative)
Hey I'll have you know the windows error message sound was mastered by King Crimsons Robert Fripp! [msdn.com] ;)
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Re:"feedback from the customers." (Score:5, Informative)
You're missing the point.
They might not want DRM, but they do want their previous purchased music to not suddenly become worthless.
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Re:Feedback ... (Score:5, Insightful)
They'll just quietly try it again in a year. Mark my words.
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Re:"Feedback" as in ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The discussion gets circular at some point, they are working for control because they think that will get them more money.
A buzzphrase that may or may not still be vocalized by executives is 'data driven decisions'. In practice a good many decision are still made according to gut feelings, or very thin data, or totally invented data. In part this is because getting good data is hard to do and even harder to find clear meaning in.
Here at Slashdot you have a demographic that should be more math oriented than most and yet you have people, this thread is a good example, writing about the financial and legal consequences of the Wal-Mart Corporation running or not running DRM servers. This is without a day's legal education in their lives and with no more financial experience than balancing their own checkbook. And with no clear actual numbers on which to base any of their conclusions.
So just like the above Slashdotters, music execs went with their gut feelings. They expected digital formats to work like every other format in the entire history of their business model. I don't blame them. All of the non-DRM music stores coming online seems to suggest their minds are changing. If these stores make for the music industry I'm sure DRM for music will be mostly abandoned.
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