Wal-Mart upgrades could sting some music consumers
Many an independent music retailer has put forth the following argument in defense of CDs. For one, the physical existence of a CD means it's not privy to such nuisances as a faulty hard drive. Second, the CD will surely last longer than any potential format changes in the digital world, say a company deciding to change or no longer support the copy protection it embeds in a file.
This morning, Boing Boing got hold of an e-mail from Wal-Mart that said the company was no longer going to support files with digital rights management (DRM), meaning any DRM-encoded files purchased from the Wal-Mart digital store would no longer be supported by the company. According to the e-mail obtained by Boing Boing, Wal-Mart states that it had been offering DRM-free music since February of this year. Any recent purchases are thereby safe (David Cook fans just let out a sigh of relief).
But from August of 2008 to early this year, Wal-Mart's files came with DRM-encoding to limit copying. Those files will need to be backed up -- burned onto a CD --to ensure that that they will continue to be playable after Oct. 9, when Wal-Mart will no longer support its DRM software. After that date, music and videos will only work on the original authorized computer, but should you reinstall your operating system or should the computer crash, the files will be worthless.
Quotes Boing Boing of the Wal-Mart release:
If you have purchased protected WMA music files from our site prior to Feb 2008, we strongly recommend that you back up your songs by burning them to a recordable audio CD. By backing up your songs, you will be able to access them from any personal computer. This change does not impact songs or albums purchased after Feb 2008, as those are DRM-free.
Beginning October 9, we will no longer be able to assist with digital rights management issues for protected WMA files purchased from Walmart.com. If you do not back up your files before this date, you will no longer be able to transfer your songs to other computers or access your songs after changing or reinstalling your operating system or in the event of a system crash. Your music and video collections will still play on the originally authorized computer.
Quick thought: Moving to DRM-free MP3 files is a good thing, all for the very reasons outlined in this post. Music files encoded with DRM is subject to the whims of the company selling the music, or the music industry itself, and that's not fair to the consumer.
However, if a company offered DRM-encoded music in the first place, it should continue to provide support for the files, at least for a longer period than the two-week notice Wal-Mart is giving. Rather than put the onus on the consumer to burn all his Wal-Mart-purchased music to a CD, I would argue the corporation should in good faith replace the DRM music with good ol' fashioned MP3 files.
Photo credit: Getty Images
typo in your article - "But from August of 2008 to early this year, " - i'm pretty sure that would be backwards, timewarp style ;)
Posted by: william | October 01, 2008 at 10:53 AM