The new Microsoft “iPod Killer” portable media player, the Zune, has stated that it will wrap any files moved onto it with DRM, including songs released under a Creative Commons License. The problem is that Creative Commons prohibits this.

Now it isn’t a simple matter of the Zune not being able to keep track of what songs are protected under Creative Commons because CC songs are machine-readable and could, theoretically, be detected by Microsoft. That is, if they cared about the wishes of the songs creators.

The following was taken from the Zune Insider:

There currently isn’t a way to sniff out what you are sending, so we wrap it all up in DRM. We can’t tell if you are sending a song from a known band or your own home recording so we default to the safety of encoding.

For more information, check out Medialoper.

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1 Comment »

1. 
   Devin de Gruyl
   September 19, 2006 at 4:30 pm

   It is astounding that Microsoft will probably be able to get away with this tactic, simply because they make more money in six months than most third-world nations combined see in ten years.

   Remember when Microsoft was getting bitchy about the “viral” GPL? Seems they like the idea of a “viral” license a bit more when it’s their product.

   Hypocrisy at its finest.

   [Reply]

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