Slashdot Mirror
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."
I have just heard Yahoo has a music store. lida,fx15
Lucky for us that we have ThePirateBay and the like, so we in twenty years time can download. Ye oldie MP3's
In contrast, DRM-free goods are guaranteed to work for as long as you want them to.
Absolutely!
In fact, just last week, one of my 10-year-old mp3s was corrupted by a screwy meta-data utility and I didn't have a backup. However, I just called the mp3 fairy and she sent me another copy! SWEEEET!
Just remember the tv commercial... "As long as it's DRM-free, it's guaranteed!" ...by whom?
Well, it's not 100% trouble free, at least not for software.
With a pirated copy you may have troubles with:
* Play over Internet / use any net connectivity.
* Use it after an update.
* Be able to update.
According to Wikipedia we have five political parties in the US, but the two that are owned by the corporates are really two wings of the same party. The only disagreements between the Democrats and Republicans are which foreign companies to support with their legislation.
The Busch family sold their brewery, I thought I'd switch from Busch to Sam Adams after its sellout, but Wikipedia says Miller makes Sam Adams under subcontract, and it's pubically onwned to boot.
The corporate media (also foreign owned; if a foreigner can buy stock in it it's foreign owned) only support these two parties. Sp we effectively have a one party system here, which explains why our government keeps passing pro-corporate, pro-foreign, anti-people and anti-American laws like the PATRIOT act, the DMCA, FISA, Bono Act, drug laws, etc.
Rather than throw away my vote on a candidate whose views are diametrically opposed to my own, I now throw my vote away on the Greens and Libertarians.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest