My Frist DRM Experience
This months issue of Rolling Stone comes with a card with a download code to download 15 Hot Oz
music tracks. This is my very first exposure to DRM and it's been a learning experiance.
I attempted to download all tracks as one package with Opera but the download did not start. So I tried with Firefox and it completed successfully, but when I opened the WMD file (a package of WMA files) I got a mesage about needing to buy a license. Since these 15 tracks were meant to be free I downloaded them again using IE and still I was prompted to buy the songs.
I contacted Soundbuzz support (the company providing the download service) and this was their response:
Dear *******,
Thank you for your email.
According to our records, the license has not been downloaded successfully during your previous attempt.
You may wish to re-login to your account and re-download the album with Internet Explorer Version 6.0 and above.
At the same time, you may wish to note that our store do not support Macintosh, Windows NT, Mozilla Firefox and Opera.
Should you face difficulty with your re-download, please revert the following to us for further investigation.
1) Operating system
2) Version and type of browser
3) Url as displayed on the license download pageYours sincerely,
****
Customer Relations
Soundbuzz Pte Ltd
As suggested I download again with IE and this time a page appeared about receiving the license and the downloaded WMD file played.
It seems the license isn't attached to the songs as I used to think. The license is stored in WMP and all my previous downloads of the tracks work now. So How do I play it on another PC? Well you can export your license from WMP and import it on another PC. As I understand it, When you import it into another WMP, WMP connects to Microsoft who tracks how many PC's you've installed the licenses on. 10 pc's is the limit, I believe.
Checking the properties of the tracks, under the license tab I can see that I'm allowed to burn the tracks onto CD three times? What's the point of this limit is beyond me since once I burnt it once I can make a copy of that CD as many times as I like.
The DRM of music is ridiculous really. Firstly the internet should be an open standard, I should not have to use IE to download content. Music should be able to be experiance on any software or hardware you please, not just WMP. So long as I can burn DRM tracks onto non-DRM CD's the whole technology is pointless
So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to burn my legally acquired tracks onto a CD which I'll rip to MP3 and copy to my iPod and transfer to my work PC.
On a side note these Hot Oz music tracks are pretty sweet and I highly recommend picking up November's issue of Rolling Stone for them.
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