I'm wondering whether they pay executives at Microsoft on their ability to make stupid decisions. It would explain a lot about Ballmer, that's for sure.

Consider today's move on the old music DRM stuff: they've backed down and said that in fact, you're old music isn't going to be orphaned:

Microsoft has reversed its decision to pull the plug on MSN Music's authorization servers, according to an e-mail sent out to customers this afternoon. Customers who bought music from the now-defunct service will now be able to continue listening to their music and transferring it to new machines until at least the end of 2011. At that time, Microsoft says that it will evaluate how often the servers are being used and will determine what (if any) further steps to take to support customers.

They took the huge PR hit for saying the service was gone, and now they've partially reversed field and left customers with uncertainty. Absolutely brilliant.

The root of this problem is DRM - and Vista is just lousy with DRM controls (meaning, things won't be looking better down the road). With this kind of "decision" making, who knows what will happen in 2011?

Technorati Tags: DRM, stupidity