Saturday, November 19, 2005

banging the WM DRM drum

Of unintended interactions
I am perfectly well aware that MacBU isn't responsible for WMP. I would certainly hope they would never attach their good name to such a piece of work.

However - Microsoft - some part of it - is responsible for WMP. And they haven't really addressed the Mac community (to my knowledge). I would be interested to know whether they will ever implement a more recent version of WM DRM on the Mac, or whether they will license flip4mac.com to do so. Linspire wanted to procure a license for WM DRM, and they were told that MS doesn't license it for "general computing platform" usage. So much for "Plays For Sure".

Reference Links:
http://www.flip4mac.com - Not perfect, but significantly better than the "official" WM Mac player. And officially licensed by MS, to boot.

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS3080897910.html - Article explaining how Linspire was denied a WM DRM license. I just don't see why, exactly, that MS wouldn't want this (except of course to preserve an OS monopoly). Are they honestly that threatened by Linspire? I thought they wanted Windows Media to "Plays For Sure" on all types of devices.

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