Yahoo plays defunct DRM tune

It's getting to be an old song. This week the Yahoo Music Store sent a message to customers saying they will turn off their DRM servers after September, thus joining MSN Music, Sony's Connect music store and other online music services in eventually cutting off customers who purchased DRM-wrapped tunes. And readers have no doubt it's a song the movie, e-book, and software publishers are also going to be singing in the future.

"At least the music industry is starting to get the message that DRM doesn't really work," wrote one reader recently. "What scares me is all the different DRM initiatives pushed on the device manufacturers by the MPAA and TV industries. Half of those things have been forgotten even by the people who proposed them, but that doesn't mean the various attempts to implement them won't come back to bite us at some point. Heck, most of them are probably built into Vista."

Vendors who insist on using DRM have just been shooting themselves in the foot, say readers. "I used to occasionally buy a DRM tune from iTunes, but only because I knew I could copy it to CD if I wanted to," wrote another reader. "I'd have never bought a song from iTunes without that capability. But still, it was infrequent. Since iTunes Plus arrived, with its DRM-free high-quality content, I've purchased whole albums from iTunes, something I'd never have done had they been DRM (and 128 bit encoding). If a song doesn't say iTunes Plus on it now, I'll continue looking for something else that does."

"The real purpose of DRM is to lock the consumer into a company's product line," wrote another reader. "It is meant to extinguish the consumer's property right to first sale and fair use. For example, if you buy an MP3 track you should be able to play it on any device at any time. To restate this DRM issue in another way, copyright holder are aggrandizing their property rights by 'stealing' property from the consumer. Too bad our legal system does not recognize theft when it is done by corporations."

One reader is definitely not going to be shedding tears over the demise of the Yahoo Music Store. "Years ago I carefully chose Musicmatch Jukebox as my music player for my computers, first trying the free version and then upgrading to the paid version. It served me well. Then Yahoo bought out Musicmatch and replaced it with the Yahoo Music Player. All the reviews indicated the Yahoo software was much less than its predecessor, so I didn't want to switch. I bought this program and it should be mine to use. I don't care if they discontinue the music purchase program, updates, the MMJ radio stations, etc. But the problem is that Yahoo has installed some kind of tracking malware on my computer that pops up several windows that tells me to update to their new service. None of the malware removers can find and kill the programs and Yahoo ignores all requests for information on how to remove their pop-ups. I really resent Yahoo's malware and their not telling me how to remove it."

If somebody's got you singing the defunct DRM blues, tell us about it by writing me at Foster@gripe2ed.com or posting your comments below.

Posted by Ed Foster on July 24, 2008 05:45 PM