Interesting gimmicks the pay-for play online music sites come up with

[zombywoof]

http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story...html#story-sta

As long as you pay, you can listen. The minute you stop paying, the files are locked down by digital encryption, turning them into unplayable gibberish.


The RealOne software uses "digital rights management," a kind of encryption that limits how the music can be used. For instance, the downloads can only be played on the same computer, using the RealOne player. None of the songs can be burned onto a CD for playing in your home stereo or your car.

Now here's the best part. Each downloaded tune can only be played for 30 days; at the end of that time, the digital rights system locks it up.

Want to listen again? Then you have to renew access to the file, and doing so counts against your next month's 100 downloads. In other words, you can only have a total of 100 RealOne songs on your machine at any given time. There's no way to build up a library of hundreds of tunes -- the system forbids it.