| Author |
Message |
Tom Young
Guest
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 Posted:
Tue Aug 17, 2004 7:21 pm Post subject:
DRM Questions - AGAIN |
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I have a number of questions regarding what steps I may take as a
consumer to protect my purchase. Is there some site where DRM is
explained for the consumer?
I have two computers, my main system and a laptop, where I play music
plus I transfer some to a PPC.
Some of my questions are -
1. Can I rename files or edit ID tags and still have my licenses
work?
2. When I replace one of my computers, how do I remove the liscense
from my old computer and transfer it to my new machine?
3. Are there other license management utilities besides what is
contained in WMP?
TIA - Tom
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Darryl A. J. Staflund
Guest
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eBob.com
Guest
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| Posted:
Thu Aug 19, 2004 6:23 pm Post subject:
Re: DRM Questions - AGAIN |
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"Tom Young" <thyoung47@insightbb.com> wrote in message
news:3484i01j8978juq0ou1bc1bnmcivh1324r@4ax.com...
| Quote: | I have a number of questions regarding what steps I may take as a
consumer to protect my purchase. Is there some site where DRM is
explained for the consumer?
|
I've looked and have found no such document. I looked at the MS document
referenced in Darryl's response, but it does not look like it is intended
for consumers. In any event, I do not see how it addresses consumer issues.
I don't think that it's an accident that there is no document which
addresses consumer issues. I think that the more consumers learn about DRM
the less they will accept it. For the same reason I think that the
participants of this newsgroup, who seem to be mostly vendors, will not be
forthcomming with answers to questions involving consumer issues.
I've had some luck in calling companies selling DRM protected content. I
called WalMart, IIRC, with some of my questions and got what I think were
honest answers.
I think (and remember that I have not been able to learn much about this)
that there is some way to migrate content from an old to a new computer.
BUT you can only do this a limited number of times, the number of times
being set by the seller of the content and is usually around three. How
much this complicates the already complicated process of "moving" from an
old to a new computer I do not know and am not anxious to find out. I
suspect that the old computer has to be operational to do this migration,
and that if your old computer is belly-up you are SOL (i.e. you have lost
all your content).
I further suspect (sorry, but I get suspicious when information is hard to
come by) that if you make a non-trivial hardware change to your machine that
you "use up" one of the migration "priviliges".
Good luck in your quest for information on the consumer issues raised by
DRM, and please, PLEASE, post anything you learn here. I'd love to buy
music a track at a time online, but what little I've been able to learn so
far about DRM scares me off.
Bob
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Stephen Clarke-Willson
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Aug 21, 2004 4:29 am Post subject:
Re: DRM Questions - AGAIN |
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The only change that matters is changing your WMP. You can make all the
hardware changes to your machine that you want (I think). When WMP tells
you it needs to upgrade your WMP in order to play DRM content, it is
actually "individualizing" it, which makes it unique, so they can track your
license usage. When you reinstall Windows, you are back to the standard,
plain, generic WMP. You have to individualize it again before it will play
protected content. Then it gets a new license for your content and uses up
another one of your license "counts", which is set by the vendor.
You might imagine that you could copy your WMP to a new computer thus saving
your licenses. I've never tried it and I doubt it would work - Microsoft
seems to have thought this through rather carefully, and plugged all of the
obvious holes.
Honestly, I don't want to piss anyone off (like Microsoft), since I'm
working on a DRM application, and I don't want to give away any secrets, and
the more I think about the individualized components of WMP the more I
realize they aren't any place obvious - otherwise other programs (like
MusicMatch) couldn't play protected content as well, but they can.
Back to your original question - there is an option in WMP to backup your
licenses. Backing up and restoring licenses when you reformat your
harddrive is better than just using up whatever allocation of computer
installs your license granted to you. HOWEVER, a vendor is free to disallow
backup and restore of licenses! Also, each vendor can set a limit to the
number of times you can do this and they don't seem to publish the limit.
So, yes, it is all pretty obscure, and your music purchase is a bit at risk.
What the world really needs is a little smart card that ties your purchase
to you. You would plug it into a USB port on whatever computer you were
using and that would validate that you are you. We'll get there in a few
years.
-- Stephen
"eBob.com" <eBob.com@totallybogus.com> wrote in message
news:%23NflSgfhEHA.3816@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
| Quote: |
"Tom Young" <thyoung47@insightbb.com> wrote in message
news:3484i01j8978juq0ou1bc1bnmcivh1324r@4ax.com...
I have a number of questions regarding what steps I may take as a
consumer to protect my purchase. Is there some site where DRM is
explained for the consumer?
I've looked and have found no such document. I looked at the MS document
referenced in Darryl's response, but it does not look like it is intended
for consumers. In any event, I do not see how it addresses consumer
issues.
I don't think that it's an accident that there is no document which
addresses consumer issues. I think that the more consumers learn about
DRM
the less they will accept it. For the same reason I think that the
participants of this newsgroup, who seem to be mostly vendors, will not be
forthcomming with answers to questions involving consumer issues.
I've had some luck in calling companies selling DRM protected content. I
called WalMart, IIRC, with some of my questions and got what I think were
honest answers.
I think (and remember that I have not been able to learn much about this)
that there is some way to migrate content from an old to a new computer.
BUT you can only do this a limited number of times, the number of times
being set by the seller of the content and is usually around three. How
much this complicates the already complicated process of "moving" from an
old to a new computer I do not know and am not anxious to find out. I
suspect that the old computer has to be operational to do this migration,
and that if your old computer is belly-up you are SOL (i.e. you have lost
all your content).
I further suspect (sorry, but I get suspicious when information is hard to
come by) that if you make a non-trivial hardware change to your machine
that
you "use up" one of the migration "priviliges".
Good luck in your quest for information on the consumer issues raised by
DRM, and please, PLEASE, post anything you learn here. I'd love to buy
music a track at a time online, but what little I've been able to learn so
far about DRM scares me off.
Bob
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Stephen Clarke-Willson
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sat Aug 21, 2004 5:22 am Post subject:
Re: DRM Questions - AGAIN |
|
|
Here's an Intel link that says pretty much what I said, but in a little more
detail:
http://support.intel.com/support/peripherals/audioplayer/3Kplayer/sb/CS-014262.htm
It's a good question as to what Microsoft downloads into your computer to
identify it uniquely... but if I knew what they did, I wouldn't tell you
anyway.
-- Stephen
"Stephen Clarke-Willson" <stephen@above-the-garage.com> wrote in message
news:evtavXxhEHA.1156@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
| Quote: | The only change that matters is changing your WMP. You can make all the
hardware changes to your machine that you want (I think). When WMP tells
you it needs to upgrade your WMP in order to play DRM content, it is
actually "individualizing" it, which makes it unique, so they can track
your license usage. When you reinstall Windows, you are back to the
standard, plain, generic WMP. You have to individualize it again before
it will play protected content. Then it gets a new license for your
content and uses up another one of your license "counts", which is set by
the vendor.
You might imagine that you could copy your WMP to a new computer thus
saving your licenses. I've never tried it and I doubt it would work -
Microsoft seems to have thought this through rather carefully, and plugged
all of the obvious holes.
Honestly, I don't want to piss anyone off (like Microsoft), since I'm
working on a DRM application, and I don't want to give away any secrets,
and the more I think about the individualized components of WMP the more I
realize they aren't any place obvious - otherwise other programs (like
MusicMatch) couldn't play protected content as well, but they can.
Back to your original question - there is an option in WMP to backup your
licenses. Backing up and restoring licenses when you reformat your
harddrive is better than just using up whatever allocation of computer
installs your license granted to you. HOWEVER, a vendor is free to
disallow backup and restore of licenses! Also, each vendor can set a
limit to the number of times you can do this and they don't seem to
publish the limit.
So, yes, it is all pretty obscure, and your music purchase is a bit at
risk. What the world really needs is a little smart card that ties your
purchase to you. You would plug it into a USB port on whatever computer
you were using and that would validate that you are you. We'll get there
in a few years.
-- Stephen
"eBob.com" <eBob.com@totallybogus.com> wrote in message
news:%23NflSgfhEHA.3816@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
"Tom Young" <thyoung47@insightbb.com> wrote in message
news:3484i01j8978juq0ou1bc1bnmcivh1324r@4ax.com...
I have a number of questions regarding what steps I may take as a
consumer to protect my purchase. Is there some site where DRM is
explained for the consumer?
I've looked and have found no such document. I looked at the MS document
referenced in Darryl's response, but it does not look like it is intended
for consumers. In any event, I do not see how it addresses consumer
issues.
I don't think that it's an accident that there is no document which
addresses consumer issues. I think that the more consumers learn about
DRM
the less they will accept it. For the same reason I think that the
participants of this newsgroup, who seem to be mostly vendors, will not
be
forthcomming with answers to questions involving consumer issues.
I've had some luck in calling companies selling DRM protected content. I
called WalMart, IIRC, with some of my questions and got what I think were
honest answers.
I think (and remember that I have not been able to learn much about this)
that there is some way to migrate content from an old to a new computer.
BUT you can only do this a limited number of times, the number of times
being set by the seller of the content and is usually around three. How
much this complicates the already complicated process of "moving" from an
old to a new computer I do not know and am not anxious to find out. I
suspect that the old computer has to be operational to do this migration,
and that if your old computer is belly-up you are SOL (i.e. you have lost
all your content).
I further suspect (sorry, but I get suspicious when information is hard
to
come by) that if you make a non-trivial hardware change to your machine
that
you "use up" one of the migration "priviliges".
Good luck in your quest for information on the consumer issues raised by
DRM, and please, PLEASE, post anything you learn here. I'd love to buy
music a track at a time online, but what little I've been able to learn
so
far about DRM scares me off.
Bob
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