from the Digital-Restrictions-Management dept.
Microsoft has announced (non-Javascript version) (emphasis in original) that
As of November 15, 2015, Zune services will be retired. You will no longer be able to stream or download content to your device from the Zune music service. However, Zune devices will still function as music players and any MP3 content that you own on the Zune device will remain there. You'll also be able to transfer music to and from your Zune player.
Note Content that was purchased with DRM may not play if the license can't be renewed.
Existing Zune Music Pass subscriptions will be converted to Groove Music Pass subscriptions.
Analysis:
Related Stories
EAGLE, The Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor is an ECAD (electronic computer-aided design), proprietary software for creating printed circuit boards. Cadsoft, the company that created it, sold EAGLE to Autodesk in June.
Hackaday reports
Autodesk has announced that EAGLE is now only available for purchase as a subscription. [Previously], users purchased EAGLE once and [could use] the software indefinitely (often for years) before deciding to move to a new version with another one-time purchase. Now, they'll be paying Autodesk on a monthly or yearly basis.
Before Autodesk purchased EAGLE from Cadsoft, a Standard license would run you $69, paid once. [...] Standard will [now] cost $15/month or $100/year and gives similar functionality to the old Premium level, but with only 2 signal layers.
[...] The next level up was Premium, at $820, paid once. [...] If you [now] need more [than 2] layers or more than 160 [sq.cm] of board space, you'll need the new Premium level, at $65/month or $500/year.
New Subscription Pricing Table for Eagle[...] The [freeware] version still exists, but, for anyone using Eagle for commercial purposes (from Tindie sellers to engineering firms), this is a big change. Even if you agree with the new pricing, a subscription model means you never actually own the software. This model will require licensing software that needs to phone home periodically and can be killed remotely. If you need to look back at a design a few years from now, you better hope that your subscription is valid, that Autodesk is still running the license server, and that you have an active internet connection.
The page has well over 100 comments, with many saying the equivalent of "Goodbye, EAGLE; Hello, KiCAD".
KiCAD is gratis and libre, cross-platform, has been adopted as a software development project by nerds at CERN, and has seen marked improvement in recent years.
Previous:
CERN is Getting Serious About Development of the KiCAD App for Designing Printed Circuits
Scripts Make the (Proprietary) Cadsoft EAGLE-to-(FOSS) KiCAD Transition Easier
Some time back, anubi and I conversed about how EAGLE has been DRM'd for quite a long while.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by anubi on Saturday October 31 2015, @11:05AM
If they can't renew my license, then refund my money. I had use of the music for a while, they had use of the money for a while.
I find it extremely frustrating to have to buy *anything* with DRM, knowing that at any time, the business can pull the plug and I am left holding the bag.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Funny) by iwoloschin on Saturday October 31 2015, @11:35AM
Wait, you actually purchased Zune music? Woah. Are you that dude with the Zune tattoo!?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 31 2015, @02:20PM
PlaysForSure
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Sunday November 01 2015, @01:35AM
I never bought into Zune. This story details exactly why I highly resist paying for any form of DRM'd software.
Nor do I have any DRM'd music, nor movies.
Only the people who paid a business for DRM'd stuff are the patsies that get taken advantage of, with what they paid for rescinded at the flick of a switch.
While the money they paid does not.
I learned my lesson years ago.
My employer paid dearly for that handshake with the sales rep. I learned the lesson - I feel I learned the lesson far stronger than my boss who signed for it did.
When I spend money, it represents something else I had to do without. Its just another budget line item to management. Another price hike to the consumer. I am sure if that came out of my boss's bonus, he would have been more pissed than I.
It was a CAD system, and I had spent years digitizing the company's facility drawings into it from tattered vellums remaining from a previous flooding encounter.
I was determined to make sure our facilities documentation would never again be threatened by acts of God. I never even considered acts of lawyers, licensing, software obsolescence, and copyrights. As far as I was concerned, I knew I could maintain that machine the rest of my life if I had to. Nothing unusual there. We routinely used machines that were over 100 years old, and did not think much about it. It was an oil refinery - full of good stuff - made to last.
Now, I did go EAGLE for my later stuff, only because they told me it was a perpetual license for that version of software. The OS it runs on (WIN7) is also supposedly perpetual - providing I do not let Microsoft go behind my back and "upgrade" to WIN10, which ( thanks, guys) was shown here to be a rental.
Once forced to allow Microsoft in behind my back, I have no doubt Microsoft will "work with" other software vendors to mandate "upgrades" to other softwares, which may place quite a bit of work on me to maintain legacy datasets. I remember well how Microsoft "worked with" FTDI to brick interface chips.
If I had done something like that: hacked into people's systems, and uploaded something that destroyed their hardware, I would not be typing this right now - I would be serving JAIL TIME.
I realize its the old "teacher's pet" system in play, and our legal system is not going to do anything about stuff the big guys do.
If anything, I hope more people become infuriated at all this one-sided law and begin seeing absolutely nothing wrong with going around the potholes businesses place in the road. I know business types are running around saying its unethical, wrong, or violation of their rights for us to bypass the problems they generate for us - and are doing kiss-ass to Congressmen big-time to have their positions codified into Law. To me, what things have been done to me in the name of "rights" has caused a complete erosion of my sense of ethics as far as what steps I will take to steer around potholes others place in my path.
If business wants to sell me a chair with a thumbtack in the seat, I see absolutely nothing wrong with removing the thumbtack after purchase.
Nor do I see anything wrong with purchasing a chair someone made, despite the fact someone else says he can't make one because he has a piece of paper saying the other guy can't make one. Somehow, we have elected a Congress that has ushered in this kind of lunacy - and, like diapers, need to be changed. ( Hat tip to Mark Twain ).
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 01 2015, @11:32AM
Previously here, Markus Zingg's misadventure with Cadsoft was mentioned. [soylentnews.org]
If you use their product, you may be punished for the acts of others.
To avoid that, if you use their product, you must make ALL of your *.DEVs yourself.
If you reuse one that someone else made (using a cracked version of the product), you could find yourself locked out of your work product as Markus was.
Closed-source software--Cadsoft's in particular--should be avoided.
Hidden gotchas and randomly-changed rules dwell there.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday November 02 2015, @04:13AM
Somehow, I missed that.
Thanks!
This particular thorn probably won't prick me as I am so particular about my parts and libraries that I make my own so all of my work is consistent. I may copy a concept, but I will not copy/paste someone else's work into my drawings.
br>
This is not due to fear of copyright violation or whatever, but there are little things like not knowing which grid settings or layers the parts are laid out on. I have had absolute fits trying to connect to parts when someone else uses a different grid setup than I use. Even my own boss.
He sent me through two weeks of special hell trying to use a library of parts he created when I was first trying to learn Eagle. Turns out he did not know much about Eagle either, and had his grid set to 0.0001. I was using the default grid of 0.1". I would go through all sorts of gyrations trying to get the parts to connect and get the wires to look halfway decent. When I discovered his library was a lot of cut and paste of stuff he found on the net, no wonder I had no consistency. Seems very few people will take the time to do it right if they can get it done now, even if its buggy.
I am still using the old version 4.16 as I fear Microsoft may screw up everything after WGA activation technologies were introduced. I want to be able to continue to support my stuff no matter what Microsoft does.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Saturday October 31 2015, @12:01PM
This is only the beginning. There are so many devices and services that limit the access to the stuff you "thought" you bought. All the infrastructure that needs to be kept alive. The same goes for games.
The outcry will only start once enough junkies feel betrayed by the pusher. That would probably be the best analogy, because the corporations have invested heavily in making all consumers into milking cows. Want your fix, just pay the fee.
That what looks too easy to be true always is too easy to be true. A critical consumer wouldn't buy into the hype and rather refrained than to become hooked. I just guess that not many are that critical until it is too late.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by stormreaver on Saturday October 31 2015, @12:57PM
I just guess that not many are that critical until it is too late.
We're eventually going to see this with "Cloud" computing, too.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 31 2015, @02:34PM
And then when the Cloudpocalypse arrives, I'll sit back with my books on un-DRM'd paper, and my music on un-DRM'd vinyl / CD / mp3 / m4a, and laugh. Or, as happened last Friday night, I won't give a damn because I'm out doing something that doesn't involve "the cloud" at all. I don't really think there's going to be a "cloudpocalypse", but we'll see more and more of these little hitches caused by equipment failures, misconfigured systems, and incompetently executed datacenter buildouts (hell, Microsoft once triggered an outage on Outlook / Hotmail / Skydrive via a firmware update to an air conditioner [wired.com]; how's that for irony?)
Anyway, we've already had a couple of huge Amazon outages in the past month and a half, particularly the one in September covered by The Register, complete with a picture of demonically laughing Jeff Bezos [theregister.co.uk], as well as the one last week journaled by DatacenterDynamics [datacenterdynamics.com].
Systems Watch had a nice after last week's outage: [systemswatch.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 31 2015, @12:09PM
But hey don't worry, you can always buy your entire collection again and again and again...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday October 31 2015, @07:25PM
Are you sure? Who tells you that one day you will not be able to buy your beloved classic again "because of too little demand" (that is, because they'd rather sell you the newest crap, as that gives them more profit)?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 31 2015, @07:34PM
Would not be a problem if copyright expired in the average person's lifetime.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 01 2015, @12:02AM
That's a scenario they've already dealt with as unlikely as it is, see DMCA.
Copyright only gives them forever minus one day. DMCA hands them that last day as well.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Saturday October 31 2015, @01:16PM
They are counting on the 14 zune owners being so embarrassed about their device choice that no one will actually come forward seeking any sort of damages.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 31 2015, @09:04PM
This is why I typically don't buy any DRMed shit, especially if the DRMed shit isn't the company's main bread and butter. Anyone who was still buying music on Zune after Microsoft shut off it's Plays For Sure game servers was probably asking for this. Wal-mart did the same kind of thing with their online music service years ago iirc, which showed a company didn't have to go bankrupt for their drm servers to go dark. They just had to make less money for the company than the company wanted. The same thing is happening with Zune.
You can probably expect Steam to continue on fine, but only because it's doing well AND because it's the main bread and butter of the company. Although if they sold the business to another company all bets would be off. The only games I buy on there are -heavy- discounted in their sales, partly because of this extremely unlikely but still possible chance. (Also because I'm not paying full price for a file compared to a physical disc.)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by davester666 on Saturday October 31 2015, @10:31PM
Well, you did know when you purchased the music that:
1) the downloaded files had DRM that needed to be validated against Microsoft's servers
2) the terms that you licensed the files under included a term indicating that these servers could stop working, either temporarily or permanently, with no recompense to you
So, basically, Microsoft has done to you exactly what they told you they were going to do, and you are only now going "but I don't want that pole shoved up my ass."
Too late. Take it like you deserve it. You do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 31 2015, @11:17AM
Now the Zune protective cover that protects your ipad from being stolen will even work better!
You may find more information over at http://hideapod.com/. [hideapod.com] Thank you Microsoft for this great update to an old product.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Covalent on Saturday October 31 2015, @11:53AM
Zuner or later.
Heyo!
What, too zune?
:-)
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 4, Funny) by VLM on Saturday October 31 2015, @12:03PM
No comments about "squirt"? Thats about all I remember of the zune.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday October 31 2015, @06:52PM
So it has come to this: the last squirt for Zune! Looks like I'm going to have to buy the White Album again.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by cellocgw on Saturday October 31 2015, @02:06PM
Ha ha ha to all the (5) suckers who bought a Zune.
I have an iPod and have yet to buy a DRMed track or to store "my" recordings in anyone else's "cloud." Same goes for my ebook readers. I don't buy DRMed books, and make sure to run all my family's purchased books thru pycrypto scripts so that our backup library is clean.
Then again, I'm a grouchy cheap ol' b'tard :-)
Physicist, cellist, former OTTer (1190) resume: https://app.box.com/witthoftresume
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday October 31 2015, @11:02PM
Yes, I wonder about people who believe large corporations when they promise the impossible. DRM that must be constantly unlocked by remote servers will one day fail. Did anyone really believe that the authenticating servers will be up forever? Or even a mere 95 years plus, whenever copyright finally expires? We see that a paltry 10 years is too much to expect even from a mighty company like Microsoft. Also, what of service interruptions? Every time there's a connection problem, no music. Servers down for maintenance? No music.
I guess most customers who go for deals like that can't be bothered to think or care about technical details and events that far down the road. Just blindly trust (hahaha indeed) in Big Inc.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 31 2015, @02:45PM
They should give me a season's pass to Clippers home games.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 31 2015, @05:33PM
Tickets to the Cubs World Series games.
(Score: 1) by turgid on Saturday October 31 2015, @06:40PM
Wasn't that the slogan? Us crooks like to use a physical CD, cdparanoia, oggenc and flac. Really does play - forever.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by snufu on Saturday October 31 2015, @07:00PM
will finally stop squirting [pastiche.org] at me?
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Sunday November 01 2015, @07:19AM
Which is that thanks to the pathetic "leadership" of Ballmer, who decided that becoming a bad Apple clone was the future of the company? Yeah thanks to his stupidity they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory as they had THE killer app that was growing like mad and could have actually taken on the iPod and actually had a chance at winning the battle!
What was that killer app? One word....Playsforsure. With PFS they had for media what they had done for PCs back in the day by coming up with a single "universal format" that worked on everybody's devices and all the music sites, except Apple of course. With PFS it didn't matter if you bought a $20 MP3 player from a checkout line or a $400+ top of the line HDD based player with PFS it all "just worked". Didn't matter if it was Napster or Musicmatch or any of the other sites, with PFS it "just worked" and because of this sites could compete on features and pricing so you had a ton of options at a time when the media companies wouldn't sell shit without DRM.
So what happened? Simple Apple has exclusive control of THEIR fairplay, right? Well that means MSFT just HAS to do the exact same thing, just slap a Winflag on a Toshiba Gigabeat, call it something "hip" like...uhh I don't know, Zune, and there ya go, surely we'll win all those users of those music sites we killed right after fucking them with PFS and making their players worthless, after all we're MSFT, who doesn't love us?
The sad part is we are seeing this "make a bad clone" bullshit even to this day, look at Nadella who really only had to do ONE thing, just one, to make Win 10 a megahit, just make it win 7 with the behind the scenes speed boosts of Win 8, what do we get? A bad Google ripoff with more phoning home than Android and ChromeOS combined....but hey, we're MSFT, folks won't mind giving us all their data because they love us...right? Sigh, the legacy of Ballmer in action, fucking the company by trying to badly clone that which is popular ATM instead of actually listening to their customers, ugh.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by rob_on_earth on Sunday November 01 2015, @01:43PM
I was gifted a Zune when they first came out and I was impressed, but there was no way to use it with Linux. Rather anoyingly the Xbox at the time hackers HAD recovered the keys but chose not to publish them due to legal issues.
There should be a strict life on all DRM, companies must put the DRM keys/algorithms into escro and they are automaticall released at the end of the period, whether the compainy still trades or not or the service still runs.
I also have a collection of MovieCDs that only work in Windows95 due to DRM, including some of the rarer early computer animations, low res but still fun.