Late this Friday, Microsoft received one more anti-DRM blow. A new version of the program that cracks Microsofts digital rights management system for Windows media and audio, namely FairUse4M, has seen the light of day.
Microsoft filed lawsuits against these anonymous authors last year, but guess what, they dropped it because they failed to identify the creators. It seems that fishing in the dark and trying to scare people from fighting the “artistic” oppression has failed once again.
Although Jonathan Usher, a director in Microsofts consumer media technology group, didn’t say how many songs have been stripped of copy protection and/or how long will it take for Microsoft to successfully fight this, he did state that the music industry is aware of Microsofts technology and that he does not expect them to lose patience.
However it seems that many in the industry are actually getting quite fed up with DRM, Apple has started selling DRM free tracks after Steve Jobs called an end to DRM. Josh Bernoff, an industry analyst at research group Gartner Inc. said he expects DRM to fade out in a couple of years as soon as the record companies realize that selling unprotected tracks won’t hurt sales - after all the same unprotected tracks are already circulating the net.
Being a sworn enemy of DRM, I will say only this: We the people will prevail!
More here.