Josh (the blog)

I’ve delivered simple, clear and easy-to-use services for 20 years, for startups, scaleups and government. I write about the nerdy bits here.


@joahua

DRM Sucks, part MMMCVII

Not like this hasn’t been said before, but I recently discovered a particularly retarded instance wherein DRM broke (and not for good). In this case it was a “bonus track” on a CD that had to be downloaded separately (problem number 1) and I’d let the CD disappear (I own the bloody thing somewhere, so sue me) but still had a 320kbps VBR-encoded MP3 copy sitting on the fileserver here. In the same folder as the MP3s was a WMA file laced with that certain poison — and here’s what it did when Windows Media Player went to acquire rights automagically:

cybersquatters on media usage rights acquisition page in windows media player

And people wonder why I refuse to buy music online.