A liar on pastebin whose claims made as much sense as the other possibility, and which were confirmed by at least one known Microsoft insider (CBOAT almost perfectly predicted the structure of Microsoft's E3 conference, among other things).

Not that I think CBOAT is a great source of information; I just don't have any reason to consider him any less plausible than Microsoft's PR people on this issue. Aside from trying to gain trust by saying they suck (which corporations never have the guts to aim for; see Sony's little PSN security problem a while back, where they actually did have a problem but spent as long as possible not saying anything), if it was a trial system there's nothing to be gained from honesty here.

And if the flip side of the DRM was that huge, why wasn't Microsoft making a bigger deal out of it, more precisely clarifying it when asked, all that good stuff? If the sharing system wasn't either bullshlapskie or having its major details discussed and constantly revised, why would Microsoft's actual discussion of their console focus so heavily on the negatives and the very minor positives? There are boatloads of weirdnesses with any explaination of what's been going on.

I don't pretend to know what actually happened, but telling me that the rumour was false "because Microsoft never confirmed it" is completely missing the issue at hand.