[Preston] MS Media Player

[Richard Revis]

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On Friday 26 Mar 2004 9:48 am, jeremy ekers wrote:

> AFAIK mplayer handles all the formats anyway.

But not the DRM version of WMA or WMV. The DMCA prohibits it, and the 
encryption isn't as weak as CSS (DVDs).

File and protocol format obfusication has failed (samba and OO) so the next 
step is DRM that uses the law to maintain a monopoly leveraged into unrelated 
areas. A neat trick if you can manage it.

The default encoding option for Media Player is DRM controlled WMA now, so in 
5 years time most average users will have pretty large DRM coded WMA music 
libraries that will be another barrier to migrating to Linux. They will 
probably also buy WMA compatible players (as others wont play this music) 
locking them in further, and making the obvious choice to buy legal music the 
Microsoft media store. Which only works on Windows with the MS Media 
Player...

The whole thing is a circular step of monopolies and attempted monopolies that 
rest on each other and propogate either other. It's been very carefully 
constructed starting with the Windows/Office relationship and although they 
seem to have failed with Servers (thankfully) they are currently going after 
consoles (XBox/PC common dev platform so cross platform games are all 
Windows/Xbox/DirectX rather than Windows/Mac/Linux/OpenGL), phones, PDAs, 
media and a whole bunch of other things.

- -- 
Richard Revis
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