Walmart now sells music downloads - how does WMA digital rights management work?

[KenSimone]

I hope this is the right forum...

I know with iTunes the license for downloaded music follows the user, not the machine (i.e. you can deauthorize a machine to play the music, allowing another machine to play the music). This allows you to upgrade your computer indefinately, and keep your music.

With WMA9's DRM I haven't been able to confirm that this is the case. It looks like there's a license file on the local machine. You can back it up and restore it, but if you restore it to a different machine, it counts against you (you're allowed to play the music on three machines). This, to me, seems like it would prevent you from moving your music forward as you upgrade machines. Does anyone know if this is the case?

I like Walmarts offering a little better, as it's cheaper, and more players support the WMA format than iTune's format, but if I can't move my music forward, that's a deal killer.

Thanks,
Ken

 

[KenSimone]

Found this in the Media Player help file:

Because you can copy your licenses to a location other than your hard disk, you may be able to restore any lost licenses from the other location. For example, if you move licensed files to a new computer, you can use License Management in the Player on that computer to restore the licenses for the files. Microsoft tracks the number of times you attempt to restore licenses. The number of times you can restore your licenses on what is considered to be a "unique computer" is limited. For example, if you reformat your hard disk and reinstall Windows on a computer and your music files are on a different partition or computer, the reformatted computer is considered to be a unique computer when you restore the licenses.

Definately looks like you're screwed if you upgrade computers more than a few times. I guess it's iTunes for me.

 

[KenSimone]

And found this on the walmart site...

I bought a new computer. Can I transfer music downloads from Walmart.com to this new computer?

WMA files protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM) encryption cannot be transferred from computer to computer. If you want to play music you downloaded from Walmart.com on another computer (or on any other device that plays audio CDs), you must burn your music onto an audio CD to play it (please note that you may burn a song to a CD up to 10 times).

 

[VicodiN]

LoL... This is laughable

 

[sswingle]

Burn it to audio cd, and then re-rip it to mp3 Legal download, and the end result is a copyable file.

 

[KenSimone]

Burn it to audio cd, and then re-rip it to mp3 Legal download, and the end result is a copyable file.

I heard the double compression results in a fairly substantial loss of quality. I haven't tried it, that's just what I read.