So the tech world got a friendly reminder today why DRM is bad and I’m passing it on to you. The story I’m referencing is here. First a quick note for our readers: What is DRM? DRM, or Digital Rights Management, is data that is added to a digital music file to prevent you from using it in certain ways. For example, a song you buy from the iTunes Music Store can only be played on 5 computers at any one time. The file literally “phones home” to get permission to do things. In other services, it prevents you from burning the music to a CD to listen to in your car. It can also function as a “kill-switch” as it is in the case of this story. Let me explain.

Microsoft-based music services are huge fans of subscription plans. In these, you pay a flat fee and are able to download all the songs you can possibly get and listen to them on the computer and, if you’re lucky, MP3 players that aren’t iPods. The catch is that, if you stop paying, the songs stop playing. Why? Because about every month, the file checks in with home base and makes sure you paid your bill. It then gets the information it needs to play for another month. This back and forth is completely invisible to you if you’re paying your bills and following all the rules.

But what if the server it calls to check in with… isn’t there anymore? It can’t get the information it needs to keep playing and you lose your music. Why? Because you don’t own any of it. You’ve been buying a monthly renewable license to play the songs and nothing more. The terms of use you agreed to before you set up an account (you did read them before you clicked on “agree”, right?) remind you that this could happen at any time. And now it’s about to for fools who bought songs on the MSN Music Service.

The way this service was setup, the songs are only phoning home when you move them to a different computer or upgrade your operating system, similar to when iTunes checks in. So the songs will play so long as you 1. Never upgrade your operating system 2. Never buy a new computer. You can burn the music to a CD and then rip the songs back onto the computer, as you can do with any service set up this way, but you lose quality that way and it’s a pain to do. Basically, your music is stuck on the computer you have it on right now, and that’s that. Thanks for playing. Have a nice life.

What’s the moral of the story? Support DRM-Free music services like iTunes Plus, Amazon’s digital music store, eMusic.com, and anywhere else DRM-Free tracks are sold. That way, you have a music file that will play as long as you like it to, with no strings attached, and no restrictions on your fair use of the files. Send a message to the RIAA that users can be trusted with digital content and won’t settle with archaic and stupid restrictions on fair use.