Microsoft's new Xbox 360 has a dumbass DRM countermeasure: it won't let you store MP3s on its hard-drive unless you rip your CDs again using your Xbox. My CDs are in a storage locker on a different continent — there goes the whole Xbox-as-Media-Center thing. Thanks, Microsoft, for putting paranoid record execs' phobias ahead of your customers' legit needs.
Get used to ripping tracks from audio CDs because that's the only way we could get music onto the 360's HDD. The console could recognize and play MP3 songs from USB devices like memory sticks and portable media players, but we couldn't transfer songs over to the HDD. Similarly, the system could play songs from a data CD that contained MP3s, but we couldn't transfer the music directly to the system's HDD. The 360 can stream music from USB devices and data CDs, but it won't let you copy any songs from those sources.
(via Gizmodo)
