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40 Days #7: Make DRM work for the people, not against them

360rrod Another day, another story about the "broken" DRM in the Xbox Live Marketplace. Sadly, these days I can actually relate. My launch 360 died just before Christmas last year (Mass Effect did it in), and after a few weeks I got an apparently pretty old refurb. That of course meant that all my downloaded content - which was tied to the original, now dead console - was only accessible while my account was signed into Xbox Live.

There are really two issues that people encounter when this happens. First, you can't use the content when you are offline. I personally don't really care about this scenario, since apart from actual service outages (like the month or so after Christmas), I am usually signed into the service all the time anyway. The second problem, which unfortunately affects our household, is that other gamer accounts on the console can't use the content on their own. So for example, Monica can't play the downloaded Arcade games while signed in under her account. That's annoying.

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