Microsoft Gives PlaysForSure Four Months To Live

Microsoft will be switching off its PlaysForSure licensing servers on August 31st 2008. What does this mean? It means that if you bought music from the MSN Music store, you're going to be shafted by your lackadaisical attitude to DRM.

Technically, tracks will continue to play forever on licensed machines (of which you can have up to five), but if you upgrade your OS, buy a new computer or just make enough hardware changes to your existing machine, you're screwed come September.

Microsoft sent an email to customers detailing the delights of DRM'ed music. This is the pertinent part:

As of August 31, 2008, we will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers

If you attempt to transfer your songs to additional computers after August 31, 2008, those songs will not successfully play.

So if you're still thinking that all our complaining about locked music is just hippy whining, this should finally set you straight. Sure, most users don't care or even notice DRM in everyday use. They buy music from the iTunes Store and it works just fine on their computers and iPods. "People who complain about DRM must be pirates", they say. The real sting in DRM's tail is that when you buy something so encumbered, you will never, ever own it. PlaysForSure? Pah.

DRM sucks redux: Microsoft to nuke MSN Music DRM keys [Ars]