Microsoft News Tracker

The sad saga of Microsoft’s PlaysForSure Digital Rights Management brand for multimedia content has apparently come to a bizarre end as Microsoft’s PlaysForSure Web page (captured above) unexpectedly revealed that PlaysForSure is being subsumed by the “Certified for Windows Vista” logo. If you feel a certain amount of cognitive dissonance with the idea of media players and content (much of them already in use with Windows XP) being labeled with a Vista operating system logo, you’re not alone:

Those of you with players from SanDisk, Nokia, and Creative among others, looking for compatible music from Napster, Real Rhapsody, Yahoo Music, Wal-Mart and such must now look for the “Certified for Windows Vista” logo, not PlaysForSure. Of course, Microsoft’s Zune is also certified for Windows Vista, just not certified for Windows Vista so it won’t play back the same protected files. Man, could DRM get any more consumer unfriendly?

Microsoft’s portable media center partners knew the game was over long ago as did MSN Music users and what few subscribers there were for the Microsoft-MTV Urge music service so I guess we have to chalk this up as merely herding the remaining stragglers to the exit. It’s also a way to obscure the way that Microsoft left PlaysForSure partners and customers out in the cold when they went their own way with the Zune.

In December 2005 when MTV and Microsoft announced the URGE music service with great fanfare, it was slated to be a major feature of Windows Media Player 11. Before it got launched however, Microsoft introduced the Zune and the Zune Marketplace and somehow the MTV marketing blitz never materialized. Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that MTV is switching horses and merging URGE into a joint venture with RealNetworks (who has its own incompatible Rhapsody service) and with Verizon Wireless handling the mobile distribution.

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Today, Microsoft solidified their credentials as a Digital Rights Management provider for downloadable media with the announcement at 3GSM07 of Microsoft PlayReady for mobile devices which they claim is a “Breakthrough Technology Enabling Simple Access to Broad Set of Digital Content, Including Music, Games, Video, Ring Tones and Pictures”:

Today at 3GSM World Congress 2007, Microsoft Corp. announced Microsoft PlayReady™ technology, a new multimedia content access technology optimized to meet the needs of mobile operators and handset manufacturers for digital entertainment and commerce. Supporting multiple content types, and flexible rights, Microsoft PlayReady enables operators to provide a range of new services tailored toward growing consumer interest in mobile digital media. Leading mobile operators worldwide, including Telefónica, O2, Verizon Wireless, Bouygues Telecom, and Cingular Wireless, now the new AT&T, are today indicating plans to implement Microsoft PlayReady technology.

…

The result of extended dialogue with the mobile industry, Microsoft PlayReady technology enables a broad spectrum of business models such as subscription, rental, pay-per-view, preview and super-distribution, which can be applied to many digital content types and a wide range of audio and video formats. Content types supported include music, video, games, ring tones and images. Audio/video formats supported include Windows Media Audio (WMA), AAC/AAC+/HE-AAC, Windows Media Video (WMV), and H.264. Microsoft PlayReady enhancements make it easier for consumers to move their content between their devices, giving them a new level of freedom with their digital content. This technology will be available in the first half of 2007 for handset and device implementation.

Wireless delivery of content to handsets continues to grow rapidly, underscoring the need for compatibility and interoperability. To address this requirement, Microsoft PlayReady has been designed to be fully backward compatible with Windows Media DRM 10, allowing devices that support Microsoft PlayReady to access content using Windows Media DRM. Microsoft will also provide an interoperability program so content may flow to qualifying DRM and content protection technologies.

I guess Microsoft isn’t joining Steve Jobs’ “no DRM” bandwagon any time soon, but that’s no surprise and in fact, the “interoperability program” mentioned in the press release seems to play up to the European governments that have Jobs so vexed.

Also interesting, but still forthcoming, will be the details on whether PlayReady actually plays nicely with the old Microsoft PlaysForSure DRM specification (based on Windows Media DRM 10) which some current mobile phones support, not to mention the new and incompatible Zune DRM (aka “Microsoft’s future“) which presumably will be on the rumored Zune Phone.

Some Microsoft news items from this week that did not find a post of their own.

Microsoft’s Ben Fathi says Vista’s “no public codename” successor (until recently called Vienna) is coming in 2 to 2.5 years and will have some “fundamental piece of enabling technology” although Microsoft isn’t exactly sure what it is. There’s always WinFS! Update: Microsoft backpedals on 2/13 in a statement from Kevin Kutz, Director, Windows Client:

We are not giving official guidance to the public yet about the next version of Windows, other than we’re working on it.

If you’re collecting Vista compatibility glitches there were some doozies reported this week including Apple’s iTunes (and more), Nvidia graphics drivers, and MIT tech staff warning professors and administrators at the school “not to upgrade desktops or laptops to Microsoft’s new Windows Vista operating system because the software isn’t yet ready for ‘productive and safe computing,’” due to incompatibilities with their standard commercial and internal applications.

Aside from Nvidia who should have been better prepared for the launch, these are actually pretty much par for the course despite the adverse press. Commercial application owners like Apple have bigger fish to fry than tracking the exact ship schedule of a Microsoft operating system, but will generally catch up within 90 days of shipment. Internal institutional applications like those at MIT and elsewhere are unfortunately often treated as merely expense items and developers are forced to take a even more leisurely approach.

Microsoft Says They Like DRM in response to Steve Job’s open letter. Meanwhile, big four music publisher EMI appears to be testing the DRM free download waters.

Paddles, CLEAR! ……………THUMP! MSFTextrememakeover waxes indignant over the recent decline in Microsoft’s share price.

EC rebuffs Microsoft over open-source report:

The European Commission has resisted efforts by Microsoft to make it abandon its report into open-source software, it was revealed this week. But the Commission was swayed into allowing a 10-day period for feedback before completing the report.

Previously mentioned here.

Microsoft Speaks Out on Russian Piracy Prosecution and frankly they need to work on their story. So far Microsoft had avoided the headlines like “RIAA sues grandma” but that can’t last forever.

Microsoft to Share Ad Revenue With Casual Game Developers. Good idea.

Windows Live OneCare fails VB100 test.

Microsoft bumps support prices for Windows, Office.

The tech world is all abuzz ([1], [2]) about Steve Job’s open letter suggesting putting an end to Digital Rights Management for music downloads. The more cynical observe that he only brought up the subject after a number of European national governments (not the EU) started actions of various sorts against Apple due to the perceived “lock-in” that comes from music purchased at Apple’s market leading iTunes online store only being playable on Apple’s iPod. 

I’ve always viewed the lock-in argument as one of those odd eruptions to which governments are inexplicably prone when they spot someone having fun without their permission, since it is well known (and Jobs reiterates it in his letter) that the overwhelming majority of music on iPods doesn’t come from iTunes. The number of people that are actually  ”locked in” to the iPod is vanishingly small, but that won’t make much difference to the bureaucrats mounting their chargers to redress a perceived injustice inflicted by a large foreign company.

Jobs’s big punchline, of course, is the observation is that Apple is forced into tightly obscured, if not secured, DRM by the demands of the four big music publishers (2.5 of which are European) who control 70% of the market and that the chances of an oxymoronic “open DRM” satisfying them are negligible. Therefore, he posits that the real solution is to remove DRM entirely, particularly since the primary source of music for portable media players is CDs which are not copy protected.

Some of the big four are experimenting with DRM free downloads so there may actually be some room there for a solution, but I’d bet that a more likely result is the offering of goofy “iPod N” editions in the offended nations which lack “for pay” iTunes music access, just like the European mandated Windows XP and Vista N editions lack Microsoft’s Media Player. Whatever the solution turns out to be in Europe, it presumably will apply equally to all the other online music distributors including Microsoft since they have the same licensing restrictions. However, an “open DRM” might be even more annoying to them due their offering of subscription licenses unlike Apple. I don’t think Microsoft really wants to figure out the infrastructure to securely swap a Zune Pass with some arbitrary other vendor’s unit.

Perhaps a more interesting question for Microsoft are the implications of the possible audio DRM solutions for video DRM where the market is more fragmented, but where Microsoft provides the technology for many of the current video download competitors (e.g. see Wal-Mart’s announcement this week). Since there is no source of quality DRM-free movie content, it is harder to make the no DRM case and since Microsoft is nearly a de facto standard, maybe the bureaucrats will decide that Microsoft should publish full interoperability information. Where have I heard that one before?