Microsoft Does It Again

There's nothing new regarding the fact that sometimes, Microsoft goes a bit over the line when it comes to "we think our users should" part. Unfortunately, big companies do this pretty often, and that's another sad but true fact, but this time it seems Microsoft takes the DRM idea one step further, trying to stick ads into the media we're downloading without any chance to bypass it, at least for now. But...what is this all about, after all?


Fortunately, at this time, all we know is that Microsoft applied for a new patent, but its name should say it all. Under the "Enforcing Advertising Playback For Downloaded Media Content" label, the Redmond giant is describing a software method that uses tokens and DRM to disallow viewing media files before playing the bundled ad first. I don't know about you, but I don't like the idea at all!

If you're thinking about loading an ad and then fast forwarding...don't think you're smarter than the guys at Microsoft! Although this patent doesn't sound really smart to me, as a user, it's a very good marketing movement. Windows Media Player is still the most widely used media player on Earth, and I am sure there's going to be an alternative to watching those ads. Obviously, that would probably mean to pay a subscription fee to some future service offered by Microsoft, so they would probably win anyway, but that's something that remains to be seen...