Continuing in their initiative to brand media and the social web as if they it was a mouse or a scanner, Microsoft has chosen to rebrand their abandoned DRM format Plays For Sure (also known among bloggers as “Plays For Shit”) to the snappy “Certified For Windows Vista”.

A little history on Plays For Sure via Wikipedia for the 99.9% of the world that doesn’t closely follow developments in DRM:

Microsoft Plays For Sure was a certification given by Microsoft to portable devices and content services that had been tested against several hundred compatibility and performance requirements. Plays For Sure certification was required for portable media players, network-attached digital media receivers, and media-enabled mobile phones seeking the “Designed for Windows Vista Premium” logo. “Plays For Sure” no longer exists. “It is now Certified for Windows Vista.”

The most commonly referenced requirements include the ability to play files encoded in Windows Media Audio or Windows Media Video format with Windows Media DRM digital rights management, used by Windows Media Player versions 10 and 11.

Zune is also Certified for Windows Vista, but it is important to note that former “Plays for Sure” music does not play on a Zune (even though both are “Certified for Windows Vista”).

When Microsoft introduced the Zune, they opted to create an DRM format incompatible with the DRM scheme they had launched only a year earlier, locking out Plays For Sure users and guaranteeing that the technology would no longer be a Microsoft priority. Considering that the format was rarely adopted except by also-ran hardware makers and that Microsoft is quietly putting the format to bed, it’s likely to be yet another dead-yet-locked format within a couple of years. Anyone who bought audio via Plays For Sure services were largely hosed by the introduction of the Zune, though I imagine you’d be hard-pressed to find any of those folks — though I’m sure they do exist, and have become just more victims in the recording industry’s campaign to punish any individual who still has the temerity to pay for music nowadays.

The thing that’s a shame here is that the handful of users who were drawn in by the brand endorsement implicitly made by Microsoft’s name are individuals who have likely never bought audio online and, now they have been burned, are far more likely to find other sources. A few of those folks will become new converts to file-sharing, or just say the hell to with buying audio online. (I’m becoming one of those people — though I consume tons and tons of music, if I can’t find an affordable way to purchase a particular album I want, DRM-free, online within five clicks, I don’t even bother with the file sharing sites. I just put on another episode of This American Life or RadioLab downloaded for free from NPR.)

With the move towards non-DRM distribution models among even major labels in this past year, there’s a sense that the DRM battle has been won, but we should know better than that. The Amazon mp3 thing is a power play to attempt to gain leverage against Apple’s hegemony of the market. The industry still “hearts” the subscription model Rick Rubin rhapsodized earlier in the year, which all but demands software or hardware-locked digital media content. (Bear in mind that the current progenitors of the subscription model, Rhapsody and Napster 2.0, are barely gasping for breath, though the music industry and the tech industry show an absolutely stunning lack of capacity to learn from previous failures.)

Meanwhile, instances such as Plays For Sure display once again not only why DRM is bad for music “consumers” (and musicians) but also marks yet another ignominious move by big music/big tech to punish the minority who still want to pay for audio recordings. Basic economics demands that you charge what the market will bear for a product people want. Initiatives such as Plays For Sure (and the RIAA lawsuits, and the doomed war with Apple, and countless other dunderheaded moves) demonstrates big music/big tech charging more than what the market will bear for products that nobody wants. At least the dinosaurs didn’t drive themselves to extinction.