Yahoo! Music Going Dark, Taking Keys With It

iminplaya writes with a link to an excellent article at Ars Technica, extracting from it a few choice nuggets: "The bad dream of DRM continues. Yahoo e-mailed its Yahoo! Music Store customers yesterday, telling them it will be closing for good — and the company will take its DRM license key servers offline on September 30, 2008. Sure, it's bad news and yet another example of the sheer lobotomized brain-deadness that has characterized music DRM, but the reaction of most music fans will be: 'Yahoo had an online music store?'... DRM makes things harder for legal users; it creates hassles that illegal users won't deal with; it (often) prevents cross-platform compatibility and movement between devices. In what possible world was that a good strategy for building up the nascent digital download market? The only possible rationales could be 1) to control piracy (which, obviously, it has had no effect on, thanks to the CD and the fact that most DRM is broken) or 2) to nickel-and-dime consumers into accepting a new pay-for-use regime that sees moving tracks from CD to computer to MP3 player as a 'privilege' to be monetized."

Comments

People are still buying DRMd music.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

but the reaction of most music fans will be: 'Yahoo had an online music store?'

Unbelievably, the follow up to that from many slashdotters will be: "My music store will never go offline." Unbelievably, people are still buying (and defending) DRMd music.

If this story (and the MS one before) doesn't alert you to the sad fact that you don't own any DRMd music you've bought, nothing will.

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[somersault]

Are you kidding? I wouldn't have thought that slashdotters would go for DRMed music. I did buy a couple of albums from iTunes as a test, one ended up being DRMed and the other wasn't - I just burned it to CD and ripped it again. I know I'll have lost some quality, but if I ever use iTunes again I'm going to make sure the songs are 'iTunes plus'.

most DRM is broken

s/most/all/

If you can listen to it, you can record it. That will always be true. DRM for music and video is a completely broken concept.

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[TheRaven64]

There's nothing wrong with buying DRM'd goods. It's no worse than buying that great deal at the market with 'sold as seen' written on it. Sure, it may not work when you get it home, and it may not continue to work beyond the first time, but if you're happy to accept that risk then you might get a really good deal.

Of course, if you buy DRM'd music for more than a fraction of the price of DRM-free music then you are as stupid as someone who pays 90% of RRP for something on eBay that probably doesn't work.

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[Tim C]

Well, iTMS can go offline and it won't affect my ability to play the 6 or so songs I've bought from there.

I dislike DRM as much as the next slashbot, but some implementations are less bad than others. (You'll note however that I have only bought half a dozen or so songs, so I'm clearly still not that comfortable with it...)

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[dwandy]

they just won't be able to transfer them to another computer without a workaround such as burning them to a CD. Annoying, yes, but not the end of the world.

There is a loss of quality and meta-data when you do this. Of course it's not actually the end of the "world" but it is the end of the music (at specified quality & features) that you paid for. So pretty much it is the end of the world (for your purchase).

This won't be the wake-up call that makes the average user see the evils of DRM, because most of them won't even notice.

This is only true because on the Dark Day it's unlikely that even an insignificant number of the customer will want to move their music to a new computer. There won't be a wake-up call, because it will only be as people replace their old computers or want to move it to another device that they will realise they've been screwed. That doesn't make Digital Restrictions Management any less evil.

On the other hand, there was enough backlash to make MS decide to leave their servers on ... so who knows? I think that what is true, is that the more this happens, the more people will realise they don't want DRM on their media. Like Linux adoption, there may never be a "Year Of The Anti-DRM": it may just be a slow awakening.

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[v1]

The exact mistake you just made will start biting people in the not-so-distant future.

OK I can convert my collection of music to MP3, good and fine, no rush right? I'll do that next week.

Meanwhile, the servers go offline. Then Murphy stops by. HD crash. Glad I have a backup. Restore backup. "Change in hardware configuration detected, contacting authentication servers to renew license.... Error, unable to contact servers. Please call Yahoo Music Store support for assistance."

You lose.

The only way to avoid this is to get a law passed that requires DRM manufacturers to put DRM unlockers in escrow somewhere and in the event that they close shop, go out of business, their servers burn down, etc, the public is given the keys so they can unlock and strip the DRM from their purchases.

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[Anonymous Coward]

s/most/all/

If you can listen to it, you can record it. That will always be true. DRM for music and video is a completely broken concept.

DRM for Video makes sense, especially in a "rental" situation.

If you "rent" a film, tv show or the like, DRM makes perfect sense. Let the renter watch it, set the DRM to expire after 3 days, then bam, it's gone. Useless. Saves having to go to the store, grab a DVD then return it after.

But yes, DRM on things you buy rather than rent is retarded.

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[msauve]

There is a loss of quality and meta-data when you do this. Of course it's not actually the end of the "world" but it is the end of the music (at specified quality & features) that you paid for. So pretty much it is the end of the world (for your purchase).

If you bought, then the limitations of DRM were also a part of the purchase, and should have been factored into the purchase decision. No one has suggested that by discontinuing the service, Yahoo has in any way broken their side of the contract by discontinuing the service. So, yes, you do still have exactly what you paid for.

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[jimicus]

/. - Don't be in such a hurry to mod this "Funny". If the so called "Trusted Computing Initiative" goes through as planned, then indeed your Linux distro may well turn out to be illegal, especially if you have added or removed stuff and recompiled. In these cases, it will not be "approved" software as the hash will have changed.

Just to pre-empt the inevitable shower of folk who have neither glanced at nor fully understood the implications of Trusted Computing saying "It's my computer, how will they stop me?"

In answer to those people, "Very simple. Your computer will no longer be a general purpose computer, it'll be a device like your Tivo or your DVD player. And, like your Tivo, it'll be more or less impossible to change the software on. Or, if you do, you'll create as many problems as you solve because online banking, shopping and even Internet access can and quite possibly will demand that your 'computer' prove it's fully "Trusted" before they have anything to do with it."

The technology has all been thought through very carefully and virtually every counter-argument (particularly the "it'll never work" arguments) has been dealt with in hardware. AFAICT, the only way you'll break it wholesale is by infiltrating a chip fab and maintaining the breakage for so long that it's not practical for the manufacturer to revoke all the compromised keys.

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[SCHecklerX]

So open hardware will become more prevalent. There's obviously demand for unrestricted hardware, so somebody will make it.

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

In my opinion not there either because really, why does it matter if you keep the copy and can watch it forever or can only see it one time? Where is the lost?

One obvious loss is that you are over-ruling market forces, in the sense that a company might want to offer consumers a choice between paying full-price for a permanent copy of a work and paying a reduced fee for a one-off use (the rental model). This worked well for a long time with physical media, and may be in a consumer's interest. However, if you prohibit the use of DRM under any circumstances, the supplier's only option is to price on the assumption that every copy is a permanent one.

I don't get renting either, how much goes back to the company which produced the movie? Do they really earn much on a rented copy?

Yes, a DVD sold to a rental company (with suitable accompanying rights) normally costs a lot more than the ones you buy in the shops that are labelled "not for rental". I don't have any recent figures, but a few years ago the difference was roughly an order of magnitude, depending on the product.

Given the two points above, it is pretty clear that a rental model may be in the interests of both the consumer (who pays less if they only want to view something once anyway) and the producer (who gains access to a consumer market that might not be willing to pay full price for a permanent copy but would still like to watch the film).

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[Tano]

Oh, it would definitely work, in some way or another - but considering who is implementing it (an organization of multiple hardware/software manufacturers that each follow their own goals), it might very possibly be busted like most DRM solutions out there.

It's even possible that you could have a software solution one day that would tell anything checking your PC that it's "Trusted", while you can do anything with it. Jail-breaking does happen, after all.

The other possibility though, and probably what most companies are shooting for, is that the TCI would work just well enough to require hardware modding to circumvent - that would effectively kill off 90% or more copyright infringement and piracy, owing to the fact that most people wouldn't be able to mod their hardware, or know someone able to mod the hardware.

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[sm62704]

If you "rent" a film, tv show or the like, DRM makes perfect sense. Let the renter watch it, set the DRM to expire after 3 days, then bam, it's gone.

I hope you're referring to downloads rather than the DVDs that stop working after one play (there was a /. story about their return not long ago). It takes oil to make DVDs and having them wind up in a landfill is sociopathic.

You say "But yes, DRM on things you buy rather than rent is retarded", well what's retarded is thinking you bought a DRMed item in the first place. If it has DRM, you rented it no matter what you think.

DRM itself is retarded. It is completely ineffective against piracy; you can get torrents of the new Batman move and you can get illegal downloads of every song in the top 40 Billboard list. All it does is inconvience honest, paying customers, and that is past retarded and nearing brain dead.

Anyone who sells DRM is a thief who is playing on the media companies' fears.

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[elrous0]

Anything with DRM on it is just a rental. You don't own it, you're just renting it until the company you downloaded it from goes out of business or stops supporting it.

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[dwandy]

If you bought, then the limitations of DRM were also a part of the purchase, and should have been factored into the purchase decision.

I guess consumer protection acts have to exist precisely because of people who think like this. You make some pretty big (and imho incorrect) assumptions about the general buying public.

No one has suggested that by discontinuing the service, Yahoo has in any way broken their side of the contract by discontinuing the service.

I'm sure they covered their legal ass on this, and so although I haven't read their terms of use I suspect you are correct: they haven't done anything legally actionable. But this assumes an educated consumer which is what shysters, con-artists and out-right-thieves have counted on for generations.

In this case, it is a question of expectation. When you buy a CD, you expect to put it in your CD player and play it. And you play it in your car, at the cottage, on your portable CD-player and when any one of those dies (or gets killed by your four-year-old) you go and buy a new CD player to replace it, and the CD just keeps on working.

So when you, as a consumer, buy music on-line, you have no reason to even ask the question of "will this play when my computer dies?". It's music. You "know" how music works. ...or you think you do.

If you buy something, you can't be expected to account for every possible way they might screw you. You have an expectation of how this thing should work based on experience, and you'll probably ask some questions to ensure that it does the things you want. If you buy a cell-phone you don't ask if it can send and receive calls: you make the assumption that it does ...'cause it's a cell phone and they do that. If you buy a pair of pants on-line you assume the bottom of the legs have holes for your feet to go through. If you buy music you assume you'll be able to play it on your computer and there's no reason to ask about whether or not the some other computer will control how your music can be used, because this is well out-side of how a consumer uses music.

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[jimicus]

So open hardware will become more prevalent. There's obviously demand for unrestricted hardware, so somebody will make it.

Ahem:

Or, if you do, you'll create as many problems as you solve because online banking, shopping and even Internet access can and quite possibly will demand that your 'computer' prove it's fully "Trusted" before they have anything to do with it."

Nothing closed about TPM apart from the encryption keys themselves. You just can't claim to be "Trusted" without it.

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why I pirate all my music, it avoids problems like this.

Content produces claim they are "Losing sales" but its customers who are "Losing products" now a can justify my piracy by saying "its them or us"

No, you can't. You can justify "I don't want to buy for them because of that" but not "So I steal it because I deserve it regardless." as the latter doesn't hold true. You don't hold a right to listen to music just because it exists.

Now, it can be argued that they don't lose anything when you download if you wouldn't pay for that anyways and that I agree with. I also agree that record companies aren't losing significant money due to piratism. Hell, I'm a supporter of local Pirate Party myself and will very possibly vote them in the next elections...

However, saying that you can morally justify your piracy by "Well, I don't want to buy music in the terms they are selling it so that's why it is okay for me to download it" doesn't hold true. At all.

They have the right to sell music they have made and produced in the form they wish to and just because you don't want to buy that in that form, doesn't justify "Well, I'll get it without paying them."

I bet you 20 dollars you didn't send them the money for the songs after downloading the music in the form you like.

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[mrchaotica]

So? What good will your un-Trusted hardware do, when all ISPs (by law) refuse to allow it to connect to the Internet? I have no doubt whatsoever that that law will come, unless we fight vigorously against it. Not all problems have a technological solution!

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[iminplaya]

Annoying, yes, but not the end of the world.

Ripped right from the page itself:
No, it's not the end of the world; yes, we have bigger problems. But the Yahoo news is just another depressing reminder of all the wasted time and energy put into these schemes designed to create roadblocks for legal users. At least the music business has gotten the message, and all four major labels and most indies now sell DRM-free online.

I was fully aware of that. And as it turns out, the squeaky wheel actually does get the grease. Note to all who submit to authority so easily: You guys frequently don't get any lube at all.

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[duggy_92127]

Just sell the shit cheap and shoot for volume instead, no protection needed, especially if the consumers actually think the product is worth the price and prefer to buy it.

That is a perfectly valid theory, that I pretty much think would turn out to work great. However, the simple truth is that you don't know how that would actually work in the real world. I don't, either; nobody does.

They've been running their business a certain way for a long time, and making a killing. Now we're in the digital age, and the context is different and changing rapidly. Expecting them to one day up and use a totally different pricing model than they've been making a killing with up to this point is silly. Of course they're going to try and do things the exact same way as they always have.

And they've got people assuring them it's possible. These companies that are making the DRM 'software' are also making a killing, and it's mostly because the media people believe what they're selling, which is the ability to keep doing things the way they always have, in this new and scary age. I have no idea if the DRM companies know what they're doing in futile or not; that depends on how cynical you are.

That's all I got.

Doug

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[jimicus]

So you're going to preempt the people who were going to correct the parent by spreading mis-information in advance?

The TPM doesn't stop you from using your computer as a general purpose system. It simply allows third party software to choose not to work if certain conditions aren't met. You can still do "whatever you want" with your computer, as long as "whatever you want" doesn't include running such software.

There are extensions already implemented by Cisco to deny routing to anything that can't certify itself as trusted. So it can also stop you from communicating with third parties.

The entire system can verify itself as being trusted, and operating "untrusted" software can alter how the system verifies itself (and hence identifies itself) as being trusted. Third party software can quite happily refuse to communicate with you if your computer can't verify itself as being fully trusted.

It's a fantastic solution for businesses - I can see lots of businesses liking the idea of being able to guarantee that their staff are only able to run approved software and verify this remotely - but I don't fancy the idea of my bank dictating that I use something that they deem "trusted".

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[jc42]

That's why I pirate all my music, it avoids problems like this.

... You don't hold a right to listen to music just because it exists.

Well, maybe. But consider that there's some obvious fraud going on nearly everywhere. For example, I just went to amazon.com and looked up some of their MP3 music. I note that there are buttons that say "Buy MP3". The buttons don't say "Rent MP3". They're telling me that if I push the button, I'll be "buying" the music file.

Now others have pointed out that DRM'd files should be considered "rented" or "leased", not "bought". If you buy something, that normally means that you have the right to use it for the rest of your life (and maybe even bequeath it to someone else after you die). You can legally give it away to a friend, perhaps as a birthday or wedding present.

But you can't legally do any of these things with DRM'd files, despite the fact that the sellers always say that you're "buying" the files. The DRM means that they can take away your right to use the files at any time. It also means that you can't legally give them to someone else. Hell, you can't even move them to a new computer that you own, without getting their permission, and they don't have to give you permission. If they go out of business or stop selling that kind of file, they can pull all your permissions.

This isn't "buying". It's at most a sort of "lease" that gives you none of the usual ownership rights that the word "buy" usually implies. Once you've bought something, a "seller" usually can't legally take it back from you. That usually only comes with a rent/lease agreement.

I'll be a bit more sympathetic to the pro-DRM arguments when I see vendors stop using the word "buy", and replace it with something like "rent" or "lease". But I don't expect to see such honesty from the sellers (who aren't actually "selling" the goods) any time soon.

Re:People are still buying DRMd music.

[cpghost]

Of course you can buy a DRMed file: you just spent money on a bunch of bits, nothing more, nothing less. That the technology to make sense of those bits may not work in the future is not the seller's problem. Suppose you bought a film on VHS 10 years ago. Even if you can't play it back a few years from now when they stop making VHS players all along, you still bought the VHS cassette, and can't go back to the store and say: hey, the cassette I bought 10 years ago is useless: I want a refund. You bought the container, and relied on the fact, that technology would be around long enough for you to enjoy what's in the container.

Insanity...

[bobbocanfly]

This is exactly the reason music piracy is so rampant at the moment. Companies need to learn: DRM doesnt stop Pirates, it encourages them.

When was the last time you downloaded something from bit-torrent and six months later you couldnt play it because of the company going down?

the real criminals

[pimpimpim]

Will they be fined for fraud? they charged their costumers not so much less as the price of a track on a CD for mp3s with an amazingly limited lifespan. For ripping of their costumers they risk what? Nothing. Whereas people getting their music from other online sources are being threatened with jailtime and god-knows-what. Russia was more or less not allowed to join Nato because the perfectly legal and costumer-friendly allofmp3.com.

Re:the real criminals

[thermian]

Its not fraud to close a branch of a company.
Sure its annoying, but its perfectly legal.

Excellent news!

[TheRaven64]

While I feel sorry for the people who have lost their music as a result of this, it has two excellent outcomes

The first is that it gives a great example of why the analogy that I've been using for DRM'd goods for a while is accurate. When I'm explaining DRM'd products to non-technical people, I tell them that they are equivalent to things labelled 'sold as seen' at a jumble sale. You get them home and they may work, and they may continue to work. If they do, you might have got a good deal, but there is absolutely no guarantee that they will work, nor that they will continue to work in the future. In contrast, DRM-free goods are guaranteed to work for as long as you want them to.

The second is that it gives a perfect case study for persuading legislators that DRM should not be legal (or, as I usually argue, that technical and legal protections on creative works should be mutually exclusive - you can have whichever you prefer, but you can only pick one). There is no possible way in which allowing an organisation a government-granted monopoly to sell products and then remotely disable them fording you to buy them again from one of their other resellers can be good for the economy.

Well duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what happens when you're essentially *renting* your music or movies. It's just a matter of when they're going to stop letting you use it. This will surely happen to those who bought songs from the itunes store (DRM'ed ones), it's really just a matter of when.

The same applies to some software even. Imagine what will happen to Windows XP-style activated apps if the company goes out of business, or just plain decides to stop activating it (could perhaps be legal, using clauses in the purchase agreement or whatever, or not so legal...)

Re:Well duh?

[DarkOx]

Thats a good point IT WILL HAPPEN. Itunes might be arround for 20 years but some day it will be closed. I think the longevity might be the sadest part of all. Unless Apple in the end pushes some automajic code in a later release that strips the DRM from any protected files it finds most people won't ever be bothered to do it, and won't be thinking about it when ITMS shuts down.

Children won't be rediscovering momy and daddys 20 year old records in the future. DRM could cause an entire generations music to be lost.

Re:Well duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Children won't be rediscovering momy and daddys 20 year old records in the future. DRM could cause an entire generations music to be lost.

Let's rephrase that. Children of today will have to repurchase mom and dad's music collection at some point in the future.

There will be no albums to browse in garage sales, there'll be no CDs to lend out or sell. All the noise the record companies make and their apparent dislike for digital music is a ruse. They love it! There are no resales of digital purchases. As more and more people move to the digital model for their purchases, the market for pre-owned media will all but disappear. It'll be the same for books if they make them cheap enough for book readers to catch on.

Consumers will be left with two choices, to buy again at full retail, or pirate. Flaky hard drives, windows machines ruined with crudware, and umpteen other reason will mean the music on peoples' machines will get "lost" over time. You can't redownload your purchases when the stores have gone down. Let's see, google video, microsoft and now yahoo have all closed stores previously selling digital media. These are multibillion dollar companies, not snotty upstarts.

And consumer faith with them

[MikeRT]

The music industry's inability to conceive of a good reason for why people would need to break DRM for a good purpose has just helped Apple once more. Yes, their stuff is protected by DRM, but it can also be burned to a CD as audio tracks. No one in their right mind will buy music this way again except through Apple until someone comes out with a system that is as laissez faire as Apple's.

some of us can work arouynd it without bitching

[thermian]

I buy drm protected audiobooks from Audible, and intend to continue doing so, because their service is excellent. Their catalogue of audiobooks is the best I've found.

They actually provide a rip to cd thing with their software, so you can go direct to unprotected mp3. A lot of people miss this point.

I prefer to use goldwave to convert the files to mp3 as soon as I download them, mp3 album maker to join them into one big file, then audiobookcutter to split into ten minute chunks. All in all about ten minutes work. Certainly its equivilent to the time it takes to rip a bunch of cd's

That way I get the immense convenience of downloading my two audiobook fixes a month, and avoid most of the problems caused by drm.

I'm not sure that they approve of customers using goldwave. Ok, I know they don't, but they still get my money each month, and will continue to do so as long as they keep getting in books I want.

Yahoo Music is a Rental Service

[Jellybob]

I may be entirely wrong, but I thought that Yahoo Music worked on a rental basis, where you could listen to as much music as liked so long you kept paying the service fee, so this isn't quite as bad as the OP made it sound.

People havn't *bought* the music, so they havn't lost something that they paid money for, expecting it to continue being available for the rest of time.

And that is why

[Anonymous Coward]

And that is why I only buy non-DRMed "plus" songs from iTunes. While I trust Apple, and love their products, I think putting trust into DRM is asking for just a weeeee bit too much.

Or 3...developing profiles for targetted marketing

[dyfet]

I am surprised the author missed an important reason for DRM, being able to track and form marketing "profiles" of captive "consumers" based on their listening habits. By it's very nature, DRM schemes have to validate what music one has, and collect statistics while it is being played, and all tied to user identities. Rather convenient, eh?

Of course, the closed source "legally protected" tamper-free DRM client (and associated licensing server) may do more than just keep track of what your listening to and when. Like other source-secret client applications (such as Skype), it can also snoop on registry keys, or other information, perhaps to further expand the potential for target marketing. Even homeland security can get into this act. Imagine, listen to too much pink floyd, and get on the early list for the new FEMA camps ;).

Yahoo! Music Going Dark

[Dan East]

I know video can go dark, but shouldn't music go quiet?

How much would it cost to keep the servers?

[Joce640k]

Leaving a DRM server online would cost them peanuts. Is it really worth all the bad publicity?

Re:Three months? Ever hear of "google"???

[neokushan]

Well done on missing both the point of my post and the sarcasm held within it.

"It's not fraud..."

[msauve]

Unless there are unfulfilled contractual commitments. I'm not suggesting there did, but if Yahoo had promised something like "you will have the ability to move the license for your music to another computer at any time in the future," then yes, the parent company would be committing fraud by closing down that portion of the business.

Re:long live Amazon

[Plantain]

5) Not available outside of the US

Even with a fake name and address, they go to extreme measures to stop the poor Aussies from getting their music :'(

Back to the iTunes monopoly I go!

(if you != fed; do s/iTunes/bittorrent/)

This is good ...

[Hohlraum]

People need to learn the hard way. There is no substitution for really getting screwed over.