I would imagine that Microsoft receives its fair share of angry emails, phone calls, posts in the forums regarding this topic. Actually I sincerely hope that the do get flooded with them so that maybe they will change this ridiculous policy regarding music that people PURCHASE (ie. buy with their own money).
I don't understand how not having a system in place that flags music that people have purchased through their accounts to redownload them if they have to reformat for whatever reason couldn't have been something that your marketing and legal teams wouldn't have foreseen as a potential issue. I mean, other companies do it with some level of success already, and have been doing it for years.
Let me give you a prime example of a company who's done it right. Any PC gamer should know who Valve Corporation is, and those of you who don't know, you can visit www.steampowered.com to find out about who they are. They have this beautiful application called Steam that you can purchase digital, copyright protected PC games for retail price, through the account that you create and download them to your computer. There are no limits to how many times you can restore, redownload, re-insert-synonym-for-re-acquiring-here, software that you've purchased through their system, through your account. The software you purchase is licensed to you for an indefinite amount of time with no hang ups or issues, so that in case something happens to whatever you have your purchase stored on, you can still obtain your purchase without having to jump through hoops.
I am posting this here and today because recently i reformatted my computer recently and went to redownload some of the music that I have purchased through the Zune software, only to find out that I could not reacquire some of the music that I had purchased because Microsoft will not let you download some music more than once for whatever reasons they have for putting such idiotic blocks into place.
I would have to assume that this model HAS to be in violation of some consumer protection laws and I will definitely be taking steps to find out for certain if they do. If I would have known that this was a potential issue, I would have steered clear of the Zune.
