Microsoft’s “iPod-killing” Zune player won’t play music that’s locked up with Microsoft’s own anti-copying software. Music and movies sold through Napster 2.0, Rhapsody, Yahoo! Unlimited, Movielink and Cinemanow won’t play on the Zune, even though these services are marketed in conjunction with Microsoft’s “Plays for Sure” (AKA Plays for Shit) program.
This is a stark example of DRM under the DMCA giving customers a raw deal. Buying DRMed media means you’re locked into the limited array of devices that vendors say you can use. You have to rebuy your preexisting DRMed media collection if you want to use it on the Zune. And you’ll have to do that over and over again whenever a new, incompatible device with innovative features blows existing players out of the water. Access to MP3s and non-DRMed formats creates the only bridge between these isolated islands of limited devices…
In an interview with Engadget, Microsoft Zune architect J Allard pointed out that Zune has sufficient video format support, in part because there’s “Lots of DVD ripping software out there that encodes to those formats, so the most popular formats out there, whether it’s MPEG-4 or H.264, we’ll support those.” Gee, he isn’t suggesting that his business model benefits from customers using tools like DeCSS or Handbrake to evade the DRM on DVDs, right? Especially since Microsoft is furiously trying to squash the FairUse4WM tool, that would seem rather hypocritical.