Microsoft guy Mike Torres says Bye Bye Napster!
Two strikes, Napster is out. I am not waiting for a third, I play by my own rules. Which brings me to a declaration: The end-user should never, under any legitimate circumstances, have to worry about copy protection. This is the chief rule of DRM and the only way on Earth people will ever put up with it. I had sync’ed my phone earlier today – why didn’t it re-authorize the songs at this point? I listened to Napster songs a couple of days ago – couldn’t it reset ALL of my licenses at this time? Note: I have no idea how this process works, and frankly don’t care. If you block two perfectly routine and valid attempts to listen to music, it doesn’t work AT ALL.
Absolutely. Napster’s already got one strike with me. One more and it’s curtains.
Ed Bott 
Not bye bye Napster, bye bye Windows Media DRM and Microsoft’s failure to address the issues with it! I tried for almost a year to get Microsoft to address more of these problems. A month or so ago they get around to it with less then helpful information here.
Microsoft has done the worst job coming up with solutions for the issues relating to Windows Media DRM. From what I have seen the licensees of the technology are having to find fixes for the large amount of problems. I find it funny that the folks at Liquid.com who provide services for Wal-mart are having to support this without the people who make it (i.e. Microsoft) offering much at all when the problem comes back to Microsoft. Going to Wal-mart for spport with WMP and licenses is just stupid IMO.
I think it’s rather stupid that you have to keep renewing your licence to be able to listen to songs! You pay once and enjoy it forever! Imagine if the daily newspaper could be read for only one day and the pages went blank after that, unless you paid money! Microsoft’s DRM and Napster are an insult to customers! Full Stop!
In my experience, this DRM problem isn’t limited to Napster, Windows Media, or subscription based services (versus outright purchase). I had a similar experience with songs purchased from the RealPlayer music store. Purchased 3 songs, a couple of weeks later, got messages telling me my computer (the same one I’d purchased them on) wasn’t authorized to play the songs. The online help told me how to authorize my PC again, but that didn’t help. It took a series of 3 emails from Real to get the issue straightened out. And even then the solution wasn’t easy. (They had to delete the authorized machines from my account and have me reauthorize them. They couldn’t reauthorize just 1 machine or reauthorize them from their end.)
I haven’t had problems with the MSN music store personally, but based on what Ed referred to in Mike’s original post, it sounds like these sorts of problems are evident in all DRM and all online music stores currently in widespread use.
The only real solution I have come up with is to burn a CD and re-rip without copyright protection, then keep all the DRM versions in a separate folder where Mediaplayer doesn’t look for music. It’s a pain, but I don’t get annoying license management prompts…