Screwed for Sure
source source Wired
by Eliot Van Buskirk
posted 2006-08-21
The rumor mill is still buzzing about Microsoft’s new Zune digital music player, but take your eyes off the device for a minute and you’ll quickly see that the real news here has nothing to do with Microsoft, or even Apple.
Sure, everyone wants to see what the thing will look like; one site last week claimed to have obtained new details and an exclusive black-and-white picture (Microsoft reportedly used a color code to trace leaks).
Forget all that for a moment. The real story right now is the fate of Microsoft’s partners—companies that naively built products around the company’s “PlaysForSure” Windows Media DRM. It’s a fair guess that all of these companies are now screwed.
