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I downloaded and installed some Windows updates yesterday after checking to hide Win 10 related updates and known phone-home privacy concerns. Though I have been running Windows 7 and the media player since receiving my machine late last summer, a WMP install note popped up requesting approval for what is either an update or new version. It came with "recommended" or "custom" setting selections. Microsoft was nice enough to tell me that "recommended" included a lot of phone-home settings to "enhance" my use. I immediately checked "custom" and unchecked about a half-dozen settings that would record or report my listening/media...

I can still purchase and download music, but Media Player won't play it. When I click on the song title, a pop-up tells me to upgrade my DRM components. I click OK, then this error message comes up first:The security upgrade cannot be performed because the server is not available. Try again later.Click again, and this comes up:Windows Media Player is not installed properly. Reinstall the Player.After 3 removals and redownloads, including a trip to MS update, the same errors occur.I contacted the download site, and their tech support tried to walk me through a manual DRM upgrade (delete the...

NEW YORK (AP) - AT&T Inc. (T) is launching an Internet TV service where subscribers can watch live cable channels such as Fox News on any computer with a broadband connection for $20 per month. The AT&T Broadband TV service announced Tuesday features about 20 channels of live and made-for-broadband content. The channel lineup includes the History Channel, the Weather Channel, the Food Network, Bloomberg and Oxygen. Additional channels will be added soon, the company said without elaborating. The content is being provided by MobiTV Inc., a company that has specialized in delivering live cable channels to cell phones through...

WASHINGTON--A federal judge scolded Microsoft on Wednesday for devising a marketing plan that would have forced portable-music player makers to package only Windows Media Player with their products. "It seems to me that at this date, you should not be having something like this occur," U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said at a status conference here, adding that she found the issue "one of concern." As previously reported by CNET News.com, a recent federal court filing revealed that Microsoft initially drafted a marketing agreement with language indicating that manufacturers that signed on would be barred from supplying software other than...

Carrying over from last year, I predict that Burst.com will beat Microsoft in their current lawsuit. But to avoid having to eat crow again over timing, let me put this in greater context. IF a trial actually takes place, as it is now scheduled to do this summer, Burst will easily win. Microsoft is at a disadvantage already as a bully. Burst will probably get Judge Motz to tell the jury that Microsoft deliberately destroyed evidence, and it doesn't hurt, either, that Burst is just plain right on all counts -- Microsoft DID violate their patents, DID violate Burst's non-disclosure...

Users have a lot to worry about when downloading and playing media files. Are the files legal? Can their computers play the required file formats? Now there's yet another problem to add to the list: Will a media file try to install spyware? When Windows Media Player encounters a file with certain "rights management" features enabled, it opens the web page specified by the file's creator. This page is intended to help a content providers promote its products -- perhaps other music by the same artist or label. But the specified web page can show deceptive messages, including pop-ups that...

Hi All: PC World has a pair of articles about a potentially dangerous new development on the spyware/adware front: WMA (Windows Media) files being used to install adware and spyware. See: Risk Your PC’s Health for a Song? http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,119016,00.asp Protect Yourself From Audio Adware http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,119063,00.asp In short, the well-known copyright management/protection firm Overpeer has figured out how to install adware through Windows Media files. The technique exploits features of the Windows Media DRM functionality to launch special Internet Explorer windows that display popup ads and that also attempt to download and install adware/spyware. This happens when the user opens the...

A number of links to war videos have been posted recently. Some of these links are to questionable sites in regards to who stands behind them. It is possible that some of these sites may be collecting visitor information for possible later cyberattacks and/or privacy violations. I urge everyone to secure your PC before you click on any such link. There is a security hole in many versions of Windows Media Player allowing a web site to collect a persistent unique ID from visitors. This security hole is known informally as a "super cookie". Firewalls, antivirus software, and patching with...

I would like to find a decent news radio site to listen to during the day. One that carries Rush Limbaugh. All the sites I've been to recently require me to down load some spy-ware plug-in just to listen to a windows media stream. They didn't use to require this and the streaming quality was just fine. I listen at work so I can't just down load plug-ins willy-nilly. I'd like to just find a site's URL that I can drop into Windows Media Player's open URL and it just play. Without it then opening up a browser window forcing...