It’s hard to write about “DRM,” or “digital rights management,” because just the name—you have your choice of an acronym or mind-numbing phrase—puts one to sleep.

So, imagine this: You’re reading a book—or listening to a CD. Suddenly, the words evaporate off the page, or the music goes silent. You investigate, and find out that there’s a guy somewhere with a magic wand able to make that happen.

That’s basically the state of affairs in the digital age: Many of the things we buy are magically connected to a company that has the power to do that. DRM is the wand.

Certain Microsoft customers will be finding out about this in coming year, as the company announced this week it was ending its MSN Store, which sold DRM-encased songs. The music isn’t going silent right away, but it will, as people move on to new computers; in Microsoftspeak*, folks will not be able to “authorize” the songs on new computers after August of this year. Over time, restrictions in the DRM will mean the customers can no longer hear them. Says Ars Technica:

The news will likely upset a number of Microsoft’s customers, who bought music from MSN Music before the company launched the Zune Marketplace and decided to ditch the old store. Microsoft’s decision to turn off the MSN Music authorization servers serves as a painful reminder that DRM ultimately severely limits your rights. Companies that control various DRM schemes, as well as the content providers themselves, can yank your ability to play the content which you lawfully purchased (and now, videos) at any moment—no matter what your expectation was when you bought it.

Emphasis added. Microsoft has tens of billions of cash on hand, so as a matter of principle it could easily shell out the small amount of resources it would take to keep “authorizing” the songs, or just turn them into mp3s; it could do that to make it clear that the company’s commitment was to its customers; that DRM is there just to stop piracy, not to stiff users.

But then, it wouldn’t be Microsoft.

*Possibly the most enraging word in the digital lexicon, incidentally, is “support.” The email from Microsoft said:

As of August 31, 2008, we will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers.

Support in the IT sense is directly synonymous with “trouble our sorry asses to bother to make this work for you so you can use the product we sold you/do your job.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to deal with IT folks to get my staff iTunes, or RealPlayers, or IM programs on their computers, only to be told blandly, “We don’t support that.” You can always get around it, but it typically involves a long educational process with higher-ups, who initially allow the phrase an entirely unwarranted talismanic force.