Microsoft Corp. is unveiling copyright protection software to allow rented songs or movies to be used on portable players, cellular phones and other devices.
The company's latest "digital rights management" software, code-named Janus, was released Monday. It will give songs and videos purchased through subscription services a sort of digital expiration date that works even when the data is transferred from a computer. The technology also protects the content against piracy.
The goal is to make it easier for companies who want customers to rent songs or videos, rather than own them, to also let those users play back the content on portable players.
For example, with the new technology a user could rent several movies for a long trip, download them onto a portable player and then watch the movies until the rental expires a month later. A user also could rent songs for a set period and play them back on a portable player.
"At the moment the current subscription models that are out there are so hobbled by the fact that they cannot be taken away from the computer," Microsoft spokesman Jason Reindorp said.
The new technology will work only with newly developed portable players, which Reindorp said are expected to hit the market in the next two to three months.
Companies including The Walt Disney Co. have said they are interested in using the new technology for their content.
News source: AP - Yahoo! News
The company's latest "digital rights management" software, code-named Janus, was released Monday. It will give songs and videos purchased through subscription services a sort of digital expiration date that works even when the data is transferred from a computer. The technology also protects the content against piracy.
The goal is to make it easier for companies who want customers to rent songs or videos, rather than own them, to also let those users play back the content on portable players.
For example, with the new technology a user could rent several movies for a long trip, download them onto a portable player and then watch the movies until the rental expires a month later. A user also could rent songs for a set period and play them back on a portable player.
"At the moment the current subscription models that are out there are so hobbled by the fact that they cannot be taken away from the computer," Microsoft spokesman Jason Reindorp said.
The new technology will work only with newly developed portable players, which Reindorp said are expected to hit the market in the next two to three months.
Companies including The Walt Disney Co. have said they are interested in using the new technology for their content.
News source: AP - Yahoo! News
What's New:
Hrm.
Maybe they are trying to tell us something
Of course, they think that's clever, but I would imagine everyone else finds that just as ridiculous and ironic.... How pissed do you think people would have been if they had codenamed it : GATEKEEPER ?
I don't believe that hampering the users to try to stop the hackers is a good way to deal with this or anything. It will push the users to become hackers so they can freely use the content they purchase.
I already have had friends tell me that the free services limited what they could do with what they bought so badly that they are back to downloading through KaZaA. If that is the case, why the hell would they go and use something more limiting? It doesn't make sense people! Where are our digital rights!!!
The DRM technology that was used in 8 series wasn't even cracked, then 9 series added even stronger DRM. Why hasn't even 8 series been cracked? it's few years old, Apple's FairPlay was bypassed few months after they started to use it in iTunes, why hasn't Microsoft's DRM been cracked yet, it's way older than FairPlay?
but anyway, i think that this is a good thing for content vendors such as disney. I would rather have a DMRed WM file than a dvd (dont dvds die after a few years because of oxidation?)
STV
What does your buying CDs have to do with it? So do I. And?
The simple fact is: I know many people who have purchased from the iTMS, and I do not know a single person who even has a single DRMed WMA file except for those that got packaged with uncompressed files on a CD but were never even touched.
at this point, with all of these cracks in fairplay, and none in ms drm, since when? wm7/8? the content providers want their content to be protected and therfore may go with wm on this. but then again, i could be wrong.
STV
Whether you like Microsoft or not you have to admit they are really starting to get their sh*t together. I've been running Windows Server 2003 since the day it came out. It just turned one year old and in that time my system has crashed once. Windows Server 2003, Office 2003, Msn Explorer (9), and Msn Messenger are just some of the excellent apps Microsoft has released recently.
STV
Microsoft hasn't put out anything worth while in close to 2 years. Win Server 2003 is nice, but it is still a pain in the ass to support when we are not able to migrate most of our apps to it.
Microsoft has released quality products in recent years. Whether you can (or need to) use them may be a different story. You discredit Windows Server 2003 because you are unable to use it, at least how you need. What about other programs released by Microsoft? Have you tried Office 2003? There isn’t a better office suite available on any OS (IMO). Included features like speech and optical character recognition may be overkill for many users but I use them often. Another small, yet impressive program included with Office 2003 is the Office Picture Manager. As a test, I created a folder with 10,000 images in it. The smallest image was 300x450 and the whole folder weighed in at 489 megs. Office Picture Manager was able to create and display 10,000 (resizable) thumbnails without crashing or stalling. A lesser program running on a lesser OS would likely choke on such a demanding request, both Office 2003 and Windows Server 2003 took it in stride.
Last edited by 39412 on 05 May 2004 - 09:56
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.