It's been almost 3 years since Ken Kutaragi, then President of Sony Computer Entertainment, admitted that the company had made a huge strategic error in launching its digital music players and download store (Sony Connect) with its own proprietary ATRAC music format and DRM. Of course, admitting a mistake and actually doing something about it are two different things. A few different readers alerted us today that Sony is finally shutting down Sony Connect and ditching support for ATRAC in its new Walkmen, though they buried the details of it in paragraph 17 of a press release about the new music players. For those who had bought from Sony Connect and are now left with an unsupported DRM that won't be playable on any new music player... well.... you now have another reminder of why buying into DRM'd music is a huge risk. Sony is at least kind enough to explain to people how to get around the DRM using the standard cumbersome "burn to CD, rip anew" method, but that's definitely a pretty big pain for anyone who's purchased a sizable collection. Of course, that assumes that there was anyone out there who actually bought a sizable collection of music from Sony Connect and somehow that seems unlikely.