The new scheme, called Windows Media DRM 10, will usher in the sort of ubiquitously copy-protected future that critics of strong copyright laws have passionately criticized. Its chief feature is to allow services to sell subscription-based media that plays on portable devices. For instance, if you subscribe to a music service that allows you to play all the music you want for $10 a month, under the new scheme you may be able to transfer some of that music to a portable digital music player. Using Windows Media DRM, that music player would know to play those songs only as long as you keep paying your subscription, and to limit access to the songs once you've canceled your account. This kind of scheme would prove useful for companies looking to sell songs to cellphones, or provide downloadable movies that you can transfer to a DVD player, or any number of other business models. (Microsoft is not offering any service that takes advantage of the new DRM capabilities. On Thursday, Napster announced that it would launch a portable music subscription service called Napster To Go that would use Windows Media DRM.)

Is Windows Media DRM so bad? It is if even minor restrictions on what you can do with your media are anathema to you, if you're the sort of person for whom the very idea of songs or movies "expiring" after you've paid for them seems un-American. There are many such people in this world, and they make compelling economic as well as philosophical arguments for why the culture would be better off if media companies and tech companies arrived at some reasonable accommodation -- a blanket license, say -- to settle the copyright wars.

On the other hand, there are many people for whom the idea of a portable subscription service is quite appealing. If Windows DRM allows you to pay $15 a month and take your songs with you on the road -- rather than paying the same fee and just listening to them at your machine, which you'd be forced to do without Windows DRM -- you may well find yourself a fan of digital rights management. In a world of constant copy-protection, all freedom is relative; we may never be free, but we'll naturally gravitate toward the systems that allow us even trifling freedoms, and Microsoft's DRM scheme could allow these small liberties.

And, indeed, shopping at the MSN Music store certainly doesn't feel restrictive -- it can be just as fun as shopping in iTunes. Whether you'll find all the songs you'll want on MSN depends entirely on your taste in music, but you'll probably find several that you're interested in, and the store is large enough that some people could find almost everything they want. Microsoft promises, for its part, to quickly expand the selection. The main advantage to the MSN store over the iTunes store is song quality -- Microsoft's tracks are encoded with an average bit rate of 160 kilobits per second, better than Apple's 128 kilobits per second, though it's a difference that only audiophiles would notice. The main drawback is its lack of "special" content; there are no Audiobooks or tracks recorded specifically for the MSN store, as there are on iTunes. Presumably, though, this content will be added at some point.

There is one more drawback to shopping at MSN Music -- you can't listen to your songs on your iPod. If you don't have an iPod, this obviously isn't a problem for you; in fact, it may be a reason for you to rethink putting the iPod on your Christmas wish list. But if you do have an iPod and yet you want to use the MSN store, what should you do?

Early on Thursday morning, I went looking around the Help section of the MSN Music store with this question, and, surprisingly, I found some very useful advice: "Although Apple computers and Apple iPods do not support the PC standard Windows Media format for music, it is still possible to transfer MSN Music downloads to an iPod, but it will require some extra effort," the MSN Music site counseled. "To transfer MSN-downloaded music to an iPod, you need to first create a CD with the music, and then you need to import that CD into iTunes. This process will convert the music into a format that can play on the iPod."

The process that the MSN site outlines here is a widely accepted way of converting proprietary file formats -- formats like Microsoft's Windows Media, or Apple's AAC -- into the open MP3 format. In other words, Microsoft was informing its users of a way to circumvent the copy-protection scheme in its songs just so that the users could have a more flexible user experience -- which is certainly very, very nice of them!

Shocked -- and pleased -- by what I'd seen, I sent the URL to Fred von Lohmann, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's copyright law expert. Von Lohmann, too, seemed surprised. "That's just too rich," he wrote back in an e-mail. "What clearer evidence do you need that DRM on purchased downloads does not help copyright owners -- MSN's own tech support is advising people that it's trivial to defeat using nothing other than the software already on their PCs. We already know the DRM isn't helping customers -- it makes your downloaded music a brittle investment, subject to the whims of the DRM jailer in your PC. So who does the DRM actually help? After you go to the trouble of actually paying for your downloads, you're now conscripted into the Apple-Real-MSFT platform wars? They should be paying you!"

I also contacted a Microsoft representative to ask about the curious advice they were giving to users. And that's when Rob Bennett, the senior director of MSN Entertainment, responded in an e-mail that the whole thing was something of a mistake. "I'm reviewing the language on the preview site now," he wrote. "We absolutely don't want to encourage people to circumvent the usage rights for music downloads. It is unfortunate that Apple still disables Windows Media support in the iPod (the firmware they license from PortalPlayer actually supports WMA but they turn it off), restricting their customers' choice of where they download music. Our approach is very different, encouraging broad choice of many music services and many portable audio devices with the Windows Media format."

When I later checked the MSN Music help site, the advice Microsoft was giving to its iPod customers had been changed. Now, instead of counseling users on how to have MSN's songs play on their iPod, the site simply provides an e-mail address for people to complain to Apple. It also says, "There are more than 70 portable audio devices that support MSN Music today, and we hope that someday Apple decides to join with the industry and support consumer choice."

Will Apple ever make this decision? We underestimate Apple's powers of innovation at our peril. Still -- if people start to think of Microsoft's music service as being the freer alternative to iTunes, Steve Jobs may just have a problem on his hands.

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