The Small Print Project                            

A collaborative document of experiences with agreements in the digital age.

November 16, 2006

Microsoft Vista, Zune and DRM

Posted to DRM,EULAs by Andy Sternberg




It’s nearly impossible to draw conclusions to Microsoft’s DRM and licensing strategies beyond the obvious realization that they’d like to get away with locking up as much as possible, often unreasonably so.

But Matt McKenzie does a good job in this CW article titled “Vista and More: Piecing Together Microsoft’s DRM Puzzle.” But how much pressure is Hollywood putting on Microsoft behind the scenes (or otherwise) to convince the Corp to tighten the debilitating DRM vice on it’s latest hardware and software and then run with it as a marketable (yet elastically defined) standard?

tuaw has nice screenshots of Zune and what it does in this review.

Has anyone bothered to splurge on one of these so-called iPod-killers? I’d also love to hear exactly what kind of new restrictions come with the 600 dollars Sony PS3 systems.

* Comments(2)

  • http://www.bprince.com Brian Prince

    I’ve got a Zune. Despite Microsoft’s precedent-setting payout to Universal, and despite the DRM-crippled wi-fi functionality, I’m actually quite fond of the thing. The interface is leagues better than that of the ipod, and having the screen in 3:4 portrait orientation seems like such an obvious design decision in retrospect that I’m amazed Apple didn’t do it first. Design-wise, it’s the most attractive digital audio player I’ve seen. Very engaging.

    That said, I don’t planning on using Microsoft’s music store.

    I like owning physical recordings, even if only to rip them to a computer.

  • http://smallprint.netzoo.net/dispatches-from-drm-world/ The Small Print Project » Dispatches from DRM World

    [...] Gizmodo posted the quick fix to bypass Microsoft Zune’s WiFi sharing DRM [...]