After e-mailers and commentators explained to Wal-Mart how much harm shutting down its DRM authentication servers would cause its customers, the company backpedaled, and will keep its DRM servers running -- for now anyway. In addition, it will continue to employ support staff with the unenviable chore of helping Wal-Mart customers navigate the rocky landscape of Microsoft's aging PlaysForSure DRM, which Microsoft won't even use in its own store.
For Wal-Mart -- a company obsessed with keeping costs down -- the price of keeping Microsoft's aging DRM system on life support will be a sour reminder of why copyright protection on individual song downloads was such a bad idea in the first place. At least the company has learned its lesson and is abandoning music DRM entirely.
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Wal-Mart's DRM Nightmare Just Won't End
By Eliot Van Buskirk October 10, 2008 | 1:07:20 PMCategories: DRM-Free Music StoresWal-Mart has decided to keep the music that it sold wrapped in a layer of copyright protection playable, following a flurry of customer complaints about legally purchased music becoming unplayable. The probably wishes it had never tangled with digital rights management, because it's going to keep paying for it long after its switch to selling DRM-free MP3s.
Looks like this will be a costly mistake for Wal-Mart.
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