 “Yup. Sound like a great idea, just like my tattoo.” |
Everyone who wants to buy a media player that won’t play all your media on it, raise your hand. Besides the guy with the Zune tattoo. Anyone?
Microsoft May Build a Copyright Cop Into Every Zune
If you like to download the latest episodes of “Heroes” or other NBC shows from BitTorrent, maybe you shouldn’t buy a Microsoft Zune to watch them on.
A future update of the software for Microsoft’s portable media player may well include a feature that will block unauthorized copies of copyrighted videos from being played on it.
Tuesday, Microsoft announced that it would start selling video programming for the Zune, mainly TV shows. These include programs from NBC Universal, which has pulled its shows off Apple’s iTunes Store.
Late Tuesday afternoon I reached J. B. Perrette, the president of digital distribution for NBC Universal, to ask why NBC found Microsoft’s video store more appealing than Apple’s.
He explained that NBC, like most studios, would like the broadest distribution possible for its programming. But it has two disputes with Apple.
First, Apple insists that all TV shows have an identical wholesale price so that it can sell all of them at $1.99. NBC wants to sell its programs for whatever price it chooses.
Second, Apple refused to cooperate with NBC on building filters into its iPod player to remove pirated movies and videos.
Oddly, after the article got out, Microsoft is now saying they “have no plans” to implement this. Power of the press, aliens returned their brains which resulted in a realization they aren’t Apple and actually want to keep selling something, or ???
Has anybody actually ever bought a Zune?
Everyone seems to forget that the highest priority in designing Vista’s structure was building in the hooks for DRM. Microsoft’s standards are clear.
As a matter of fact, I own one of the first gen Zune. It was updated for free to second gen. It still falls a little short in a couple of areas as compared to ipod, but is actually superior in several ways, most notably, sound quality.
Hopefully they spend effort on correcting the shortcomings, instead of doing something incredibly stupid as this.
“Microsoft MAY….” gets translated into “Microsoft WILL….” geez can’t you read, they may, they might. I find it interesting that Apple insists on one price. There isn’t “one price” for music or video anywhere in any retail store I have gone in. It’s stupid. NBC has been around a lot longer than Apple, and so has retail, I think they both know what they are doing.
>>As a matter of fact, I own one of the
>>first gen Zune.
Heh. Heh heh heh. My condolences. I hope you revel in your inability to play stuff.
Balmer needs to stick to throwing chairs and picking up his paycheck.
As a side note. I have Vista Ultimate 64bit on one of my computers, works great. I can rip, burn, view, manipulate, copy and listen too all kinds of copyrighted media with it. Of course I don’t use the MS system/media tools except for the built in DVD/CD burner utility.
I have had no problem at all doing what I want with any kind of media. Legit and pirated. The DRM hooks didn’t make it in I guess. If there are actual DRM hooks Microsoft pretty much sold their ‘partners’ a line of bullshit. Win Media player v.11 doesn’t count, who uses that piece of crapware anyway?
What else is new.
M$ isn’t called the “Evil Empire” for nothing !!! Any statement they might make must be considered LIES, LIES, AND MORE DAMNED LIES !!!
I own a first gen Zune and still love it.
>>I own a first gen Zune and still love it.
Heh. Heh heh heh.
I have to question the motives and design philosophy of a company that seems to always deliberately design and (try to) sell products that are blatantly second-best, or what the public would not want. If it weren’t for Windows and Office, M$ would have closed up shop ten years ago… unless everything else is for tax writeoff purposes?
#5 “Heh. Heh heh heh. My condolences. I hope you revel in your inability to play stuff.”
What can’t be played?
The continually ignorant MS FUD is amusing. Alowing the OS to support DRM formats is not the same as “OMG we wont be able to play our MP3s anymore!?!!?”
There was the same fearmongering when XP came out – that the activation system would prevent the use of mp3s, internet videos, unlicenced programs, etc.
If MS hadnt added the DRM capability for HD-DVD and BluRay people would be tearing them a new one for not keeping up with the times. “Why wont my new laptop play movies!?!”
As for the Zune, the whole article seems to be supposition. When I hear something definitive, I’ll be right there passing out the torches and pitchforks.
Until then I’ll be enjoying one of the nicest PMPs on the market: my Zune 80.
Uuuh, zune the iPod-Killer.
apparently, zune and nbc are allergic to money
I’m calling bullshit. There’s no way to build such a filter, since it would have to distinguish legal NBC shows, pirated NBC shows, and other shows. Legal is easy, because they have DRM. But it would be nearly impossible to tell other NBC shows from other shows, since video content gets transcoded before it goes on the Zune. Even an attempt at doing so would require to compare the file to an existing, non-local database of some sort, which sounds a little difficult for a mobile device.
Don’t know about ZUNE but with the Ipod you can install linux or Rockbox. It was a love/hate relation with my Ipod till I installed Rockbox. Now I’m free to play what I want, the way I want. No more itunes or winamp to make a database so I can see my files by their names now. They’ve got a version for a dozen or so players, and is written open source, if you got a player checkitout.
#16 nails it on the head. They can’t distinguish legit from “pirate” material on the fly, on the player. The only way they could impose something like this would be to A) force an upload interface onto the ZunePC process (shades of iTunes) and B) force a fuzzy logic comparison between material being uploaded to the Zune and a web-based database. But if they could actually get such a process to work at all (and I’d call that a small miracle), the process could easily be circumvented by making small changes to the encoded track that would result in a “no match” result.
Sorry, but unless you build a player that REQUIRES the DRM be present for all content (i.e. you cannot play your own, non DRM’d material) this is just nonsense.
@#19: Knowing MS and seeing what they did with the Vista their likely action is to require DRM for the content to be played.
Mister Mustard, I own a 2nd gen Zune 80 and I have been very happy with it. I listen daily to the Tech 5 podcast, “TWIT” weekly and watch “crankygeeks”, just fine. “No agenda” works well and I have an audible book, no big problem. so far 8 GB of music downloaded from the Zune store, without problems. Ripped my CD’s in very short time. Battery life is fine, lasted two and from the coasts on the airplane. Seems your a little elitist by chance? I also own 3 XBoX 360 with XBOX live accounts, no problems, 1 ROD, but then that is the price for the product. I will not use a Vista PC, XP is fine. I find JOBS and company as big a pain as some people find Ballmer and Gates. Big Deal!
And Pedro seems to be an ad hominem argument debater.
Do you have more proof than is in the very unsubstantiated blog post that MS will cripple Zune? In agreement with the insightful comments above, its not only a bad idea, its not possible. MS went out of their way to support the common ipod video format. They wouldn’t be opening up the player just to shut it down again.
I know you disagree, but you you have a factual problem with what I said about DRM, XP and Vista? The Vista DRM problem is overblown FUD, just like it was in XP.
If all you can do is call names, maybe you shouldn’t debate at the grown up table.
Sounds like your beef is with the DVD manufacturer who loaded up the DVD with DRM. That is assuming of course the culprit is DRM, given the paucity of information I couldn’t say.
I suppose you stopped buying VCRs when they implemented Macrovision Copy protection across the board too.
Ok, youre right it is *possible* to lock down the player to only play DRM files. But I see no evidence of that intention. In fact, as I stated in my previous reply, they seem to be going the other way. The old Zune only supported mp3, wma and wmv natively and transcoded anything else. Now support includes unprotected aac and mp4 bringing it in line with ipod supported formats.
I know its popular to fear and hate MS, but Zune is becoming quite a competitive product. If they can fix the lousy software they’ll really have a winner.
At the very least I support someone keeping Apple honest.
If the zune fanboys read up on NBC’s Copyright Cop, you’ll discover the intent is to seek and destroy anything it considers to be pirated – on the same device as their precious content.
You can babble all day about how that isn’t possible or legitimate – in your mind – but, do you actually think that means anything to NBC?
Sony knew the danger of rootkits and went ahead with them, hoping no one would notice or there wouldn’t be sufficient outcry. NBC ain’t any more ethical than Sony.
#25, your point is valid, but I do not watch that many NBC shows, so if NBC wants to control its content, then they should be able to. The problem with all this is some clever hacker will come up with a work around and we are off to the races again. Why do all the media companies feel they must push things outside of the market economy. I will gladly pay $1.99 for a TV show, if I feel I truly need to watch it. They have advertising for broadcast and fees for PPV for IPOD/Zune like devices to allow for time shifting. TIVO works great as well for time shifting. It just appears to me that the people running the show do not understand the new world of digital all the time.
Again I see no evidence other than a flurry of panicked blog posts that policy is to be implemented.
Seems to me it was a misstatement by an overzelous NBC exec who didnt know what he was talking about.
Who knows, MS has done crazy stupid things in the past. I could be eating my words next year.
All I know for sure is my Zune is a hell of a player right now. If they mess it up it’ll be the last one they sell me. I suppose I’ll go knock on Creative’s door.