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Yahoo Offers Compensation For Unplayable Music
DrEnter writes "According to this article, Yahoo will offer some compensation after they turn off their DRM servers and Yahoo Music customers will no longer be able to access their music. The company said Wednesday it is offering coupons on request for people to buy songs again through Yahoo's new partner, RealNetworks Inc.'s Rhapsody. Those songs will be in the MP3 format, free of copy protection. Refunds are available for users who 'have serious problems with this arrangement,' Yahoo said. Nice to see them step up and do something, especially without trading one DRM scheme for another."
Did you even read the summary? They're offering refunds to those who have problems with accepting the MP3 downloads.
I didn't even RTFA and I still understood this:
Refunds are available for users who "have serious problems with this arrangement," Yahoo said.
Scorta futuere amo!
As shitty as Real Player is, Real Networks isn't such a bad company. Their Helix media framework is mostly open source, and they gave $500,000 to the OSU Open Source Lab a few years back for their work in using it on the OLPC project.
I had Yahoo! Music Unlimited and it was a great service. This service was also transferred over to Rhapsody. (Yahoo users continue to pay $5.99 / mo using Rhapsody, where as Rhapsody typically charges $12.99 / month.) I actually like the subscription services. The Rhapsody music player is surprisingly nice and runs well. Plenty of music to choose from with over 4 million songs.
Without the license server up, you'd likely have to crack or backdoor the DRM somehow, which would end up being a blanket solution applicable to a wide range of other WMAs. I doubt any respectable player the size and stature of Yahoo! would do such a thing, and they might even be DMCA-liable if they did.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
That's funny and all, but in case anybody takes you seriously... Rhapsody sells MP3 files now. Real, honest-to-goodness MP3 files; no killer bees required.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
``Any affected customers want to tell us if they think they can have their entire library transfered over?''
Have it transfered over? No. Rather, they'll have to download every single song all over again, manually, if they want to rebuild their collection. And that is only even possible if (1) the library the coupons give access to has all those songs and (2) the coupons are enough to pay for all that.
Alternatively, of course, they could pay out of their own pocket to download the songs from a different service. Or download them for free from various services. Or hope that someone will release some software that allows them to play the songs they already downloaded and paid for.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
"Now this is just my opinion. But I believe it as fact."
Well, which is it? Opinion or fact?
I believe chocolate to have a better taste than vanilla. That is just my opinion. And I believe it is not a fact, but just an opinion. I also believe chocolate has better health benefits than vanilla. That is just my opinion. But I believe it as a fact.
What GP is saying is simple: I *know* this is an opinion (mine) but I *believe* it to be a fact too - much more likely true than false. To ask the same person "which is it?" is to have totally misconstrued the point.