Sunday, August 29, 2004
Pocket PC/Smartphones and DRM - A Completely Broken Scenario
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THOUGHT" @ 04:00 PM
Janak brought OSUKid7's post to my attention and it was a reminder of something I meant to post on a while back: Pocket PCs and Smartphones, even running the newest Windows Mobile 2003 SE OS, are not compatible with music download service such as Napster, Wal-mart, or any other WMA-based DRM store - at least when we're talking about memory cards. The reason as to why is long and complicated, but there's a reason why no Pocket PC is listed as being "Music Service Friendly". And this isn't related to the Janus DRM either - that's DRM for subscription-based music that will time out. This problem, as far as I understand it (and I'm no expert here) relates to the issue of how memory cards are handled by the Pocket PC. Pocket PCs themselves have unique identifiers for music and eBook DRM security, but memory cards in a Pocket PC or Smartphone are problematic because they don't have these unique identifiers. So if you were allowed to copy your DRM'd music over to a memory card, you could take that memory card out of your Pocket PC and put it in another Pocket PC and play the music on it. Oh the horrors! :roll: This is, of course, exactly what the content providers want to avoid - the easy sharing of content.
I did some testing on my Dell Axim X30 using DRM-protected songs from Puretracks, an online Canadian music store. I could sync and play tracks from both internal RAM, and internal storage. When I performed this test two months ago using Windows Media Player 9, I remember being able to sync to the memory card as well, and that being unusual because people using Napster and Wal-mart couldn't. However, Windows Media Player 10 beta doesn't recognize the memory card on the X30, so I can't perform the test again to confirm that. When I sync the song to internal memory and then cut/paste the track to the memory card, it won't play. I wonder why the DRM license needs to be on the memory card? Why not have the DRM licenses remain in main system RAM from the sync process, the DRM'd songs go to the memory card, and the songs on that memory card would only work in the Pocket PC that was part of the initial sync. That would seem to be the goal Microsoft is going for. There must be a technological reason why this isn't possible, because it would seem to be the shortest way to accomplish the goal of both protecting the content and letting Pocket PC and Smartphone owners buy music online.
At any rate, if you've been wondering why your Napster/Wal-mart DRM'd tracks won't play on your Pocket PC, that's why. Completely broken scenario. :? The only solution is to burn a CD and re-rip the track at the same bitrate that the original file was in - that should minimize audio quality loss. Not ideal, but it's the only solution I'm aware of. I've done this with all my songs from Puretracks because the DRM was such a hassle (check out Digital Media Thoughts tomorrow for a big rant on that subject).
UPDATE: It's been suggested that since the music companies use more sophisticated encoders for their music, when you rip the CD, you should encode it one or two notches higher than that original source file. So if you have a 128 kbps WMA from Napster, burn it to a CD, then rip it at 160 kbps or 192 kbps.
I did some testing on my Dell Axim X30 using DRM-protected songs from Puretracks, an online Canadian music store. I could sync and play tracks from both internal RAM, and internal storage. When I performed this test two months ago using Windows Media Player 9, I remember being able to sync to the memory card as well, and that being unusual because people using Napster and Wal-mart couldn't. However, Windows Media Player 10 beta doesn't recognize the memory card on the X30, so I can't perform the test again to confirm that. When I sync the song to internal memory and then cut/paste the track to the memory card, it won't play. I wonder why the DRM license needs to be on the memory card? Why not have the DRM licenses remain in main system RAM from the sync process, the DRM'd songs go to the memory card, and the songs on that memory card would only work in the Pocket PC that was part of the initial sync. That would seem to be the goal Microsoft is going for. There must be a technological reason why this isn't possible, because it would seem to be the shortest way to accomplish the goal of both protecting the content and letting Pocket PC and Smartphone owners buy music online.
At any rate, if you've been wondering why your Napster/Wal-mart DRM'd tracks won't play on your Pocket PC, that's why. Completely broken scenario. :? The only solution is to burn a CD and re-rip the track at the same bitrate that the original file was in - that should minimize audio quality loss. Not ideal, but it's the only solution I'm aware of. I've done this with all my songs from Puretracks because the DRM was such a hassle (check out Digital Media Thoughts tomorrow for a big rant on that subject).
UPDATE: It's been suggested that since the music companies use more sophisticated encoders for their music, when you rip the CD, you should encode it one or two notches higher than that original source file. So if you have a 128 kbps WMA from Napster, burn it to a CD, then rip it at 160 kbps or 192 kbps.
