Microsoft: "Zune Does Not Violate Creative Commons"

I followed up with Microsoft on some Zune questions from readers of this blog, including one about whether Microsoft's MP3 sharing policy, which lets wirelessly-shared MP3s play three times in three days on the Zune to which it was shared, violates Creative Commons licenses designed to allow copyright owners to designate their content as freely-sharable, if that's what they want to do.

Microsoft denies that the Zune sharing feature violates the licenses:

"The wireless feature of Zune does not violate Creative Commons. As a Creative Commons partner and as an intellectual property owner itself, Microsoft respects the intellectual property right of others and the terms of the Creative Content Licenses...

"Microsoft is aware of the inaccurate reports that the Zuneto Zune Wireless feature imposes 'viral DRM' on audio files and thatthis violates the Creative Commons license. In fact, we are notapplying any 'DRM' to any files that weren't already protected. Nofile that has (for instance) a Creative Commons license or isunprotected will have any encryption applied to it. The 3-day/3-playexpiration applies only to songs that you have received in your Inboxon the Zune device. After 3 plays in 3 days, you can no longer play thesong; however, you can still see a listing of the songs with theassociated metadata."

From what I gather, they really aren't adding DRM to thefile itself, but to otherwise render a song with a Creative Commonslicense unplayable and unsharable in any way is against the spirit, if not the letter, of the licenses. I've left a voice message and sent an email to theCreative Commons to see what their take is on this.

Regardless, I think the Zune plus total support for CC-licensed files would be pretty great.

(Hands-On with the Zune: Part 1, Part 2)