Yahoo plans to kill DRM servers
At the motherboing, Cory writes to remind us that with DRM music, you get exactly what you pay for: a license to listen than can be revoked at any time, for any reason:
Yahoo Music just announced that it's pulling the plug on its DRM server -- that means that as of September 30, everyone who bought Yahoo Music will lose the ability to recover it from backup or transfer it to a new PC.
Yahoo recommends that customers burn CDs and re-rip the tracks they bought, an act that music industry lawyers claimed is stealing. It will also have most consumers inadvertently double-dipping on compression, a quality no-no that will serve only to further enrage Neil Young.
A question: do you have any sympathy for consumers who wanted to do the right thing, and bought tracks under these schemes? Or are they just learning the lesson they should have understood to begin with?
Yahoo Music shutting down its DRM server, customers lose all their paid-for music the next time they crash or upgrade [BoingBoing]
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If yahoo was thinking practically about customer service, they'd publish a cracker app that users could run to remove the drm from their tracks, thereby ensuring useablity going forward. That's what would happen if they were treating this as normal client-server data--you don't decomm a server without providing a means for accessing the data it used to host.
Too bad some data is more equal than others.
The RIAA wants so bad to equate stealing music with shoplifting physical items.
Well if I "legally" buy a bike, the store isn't going to come out one day and take the wheels.
Surely there is some legal cause of action against Yahoo.
"A question: do you have any sympathy for consumers who wanted to do the right thing, and bought tracks under these schemes? Or are they just learning the lesson they should have understood to begin with?"
Yes. Most people would rather not be theives. Especially when they really like a peice of music and want the makers to be compensated.
Unfortunately, this has taught them that they may as well steal from the record companies, as they have stolen from them.
I feel no sympathy for the folks that are getting screwed... in fact I'm kind of glad it's happening... MS postponed their PlaysForSure decomission because of public outrage, and I have a feeling Yahoo's actions will fuel the same kind of rage. Without people buying DRM protected music and getting screwed because of it, lots of folks (and especially the companies) wouldn't learn why it's a bad idea. The companies still may not change, but it's certainly not going to hurt.
I've personally been using a zunepass subscription to find music, and then I've been buying the best of the stuff I find through the Amazon mp3 store. I hope someday there's an all-you-can-eat subscription service without DRM, but I can see why that's probably a long ways off.
This was a cylon resurrection ship
> do you have any sympathy for consumers who wanted to do the right thing, and bought tracks under these schemes?
Very much sympathy. Savvy computer users are bound to understand the issues whereas an older or less-informed person can easily be led to believe that their purchased music will work forever.
To say that someone 'should' be screwed on music opens up doors to a pretty horrible society. Should I die on the operating table because I didn't check to see if my heart monitor was open source? Should I get food poisoning because I was naive enough to not check on a restaurant's history with health inspectors just before going in, or insisting on seeing the kitchen first? Maybe in some fucked up Atlas Shrugged world of zero vendor responsibility.
The music shouldn't be locked down past the viability or will of a company to vouch for its conformity to a license, and customers shouldn't be punished for trusting vendors, and shame on Yahoo for failing its customers so completely.
I also feel no sympathy for these people. They failed to do their homework before they bought music, and now they're going to pay for it. On top of that, they basically supported the DRMed media model, which surely helped convince the RIAA that they were on the right track, and has encouraged them to continue pushing DRM on consumers. Basically, the people who bought DRMed music from Yahoo became part of the problem.
In addition, I'm actually kind of glad that these people are getting burned... the more people who are left with a bad taste in their mouth from the issues inherent with DRMed media, the more people there will be urging others to avoid it.
@6 The big difference is that if people were dying on operating tables or getting food poisoning at restaurants, there would be repercussions because that is a very obvious problem, and people would stop using those facilities. No, it's not the responsibility of the customer to check the kitchen or the equipment in your examples, but that's a bad analogy; you are paying for a service, not only a product.
If you got to the hospital and saw unclean surgical tools, or found a tooth in your burrito at a restaurant, you'd complain or go somewhere else. The DRM tracks these folks bought... well, that's closer to ordering your burrito with teeth in it, and then being upset because you didn't know that teeth don't make for good burritos. In that case, it is indeed the customer's fault for not doing their homework.
Well clearly what we need is a massive, high profile class action suit.
Just Say No To DRM
It's a rip off.
I'd launch into an anti-DRM rant, but Cory Doctorow said it all already and better than I could.
The only people being hurt by DRM are the ones who seek to abide by the law.
@7
No one should have to do homework to buy music. So, yeah I feel bad for them. At the same time I take issue with people who tout "revolutionary" content distrobution methods like Steam when they basically feature the same kind of problems.
I absolutely feel sympathy. These people have been defrauded by the industry and Yahoo, who all claim that DRM is needed so that consumers can have new choices. Don't blame the victim, blame the con artist who tricked them (and the collaborators in media and in congress who enable them).
Sympathy? No.
Given how many times I've been told I'm a communist and a thief when I've tried to educate and inform people that intellectual property IS NOT the same as physical property, and how many people I've warned off of any DRM infected media and educated in how easy it is to buy and rip CDs, no.
When you don't bother learning your rights and how to do things yourself, you have only yourself to blame when you get screwed.
These are wonderful comments. Thank you all. A plurality of opinions, all respectfully presented.
No more sympathy than for people who bought 8 track tape players or DCC players. Nothing is eternal.
@15
Actually, I still have a functioning 8 track player. I can't find new tapes, but at least what I have works. When the factory shut down no one came to my house to pull the plug. The same can't be said for Yahoo's music format.