Yahoo! Music Going Dark, Taking Keys With It 396
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."
People are still buying DRMd music. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Interesting)
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? Heck, I even own regular DVDs I bought like 5 years ago which I still haven't watched .. What says people would see their rented movies multiple times anyway?
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.
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? Or are you mostly paying to the person renting you the movie? In that case why is that so important? Why does renting even exist? If the companies only get a very small amount of money for rented copies but people still rent because it's cheaper and one only watch most stuff one time anyway they should hate it.
Re:People are still buying DRMd music. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to work at a video rental store and saw the catalogs for the movies that were coming available. The cost for a movie that was not a headliner was $90. Headliner movies sometimes worked themselves up into the $125 and higher range. The point of renting a movie was that the video store had to recoup their costs by renting the movie multiple times. The appeal for the customer was that they could spend $3 for a rental and not have to pay upwards of $20 to see a movie they may only watch one more time.
Granted, this was back in the early 90s when the rental business model may have been different. It used to be that the studios would release the movies in this order: theater, rental, pay-per-view, pay channels, consumer purchase. Now movies are released for rental the same day they are available at Walmart for $14.
I will still keep my Netflix account active, and use it frequently because I may only want to watch a movie one time. With kids I don't get out to the theater that often any more unless it is a family friendly movie. With Netflix I can watch movies at home without having to pay the babysitter $60 on top of the $20+ it costs me and my wife to purchase theater tickets. As long as there are situations like mine out there, video rental businesses will make money on us.
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It is different today, so called "rental-pricing" never made the leap from vhs to dvd.
At first the rental places were paying wholesale, just like wal-mart. Now there are revenue-sharing agreements such that they pay next to nothing for the physical discs in return for sending some percentage of rental revenue back to the studio... In some cases this also kills the used market - part of the agreements are to send back 'a lot' of the physical discs (for destruction) once rental rates on a title drop below a
Re:People are still buying DRMd music. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:4, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:People are still buying DRMd music. (Score:4, Insightful)
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. (Score:4, Insightful)
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. (Score:4, Informative)
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Don't even need to do that. Just use a VCR designed for (semi)professional video production. Since they typically don't use any AGC on the incoming video signal, they also aren't affected by Macrovision. You'll pay a lot more for the VCR, of course, but....
Or you could probably design a circuit that notches out that part of the signal fairly easily. No, I will not design the circuit for you, but I think I could build one for under five bucks with a handful of parts that I have lying around my house alre
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Linux is illegal! You are breaking the law, and hurting yourself and your family with your ILLEGAL SOFTWARE. Your ip has been noted and is being forwarded to the SPA with a reccomendation that they investigate your CRIMINAL ACTIVITY. Please destroy all your unpatriotic linux software before the government finally cracks down on you people and you all end up as lampshades or soap.
Re:People are still buying DRMd music. (Score:5, Interesting)
All DRM is almost as completely screwed up as the laws that purport to deal with it. My personal favorite silly DRM law is the one which sets out massive penalties for circumventing a DRM mechanism - making anyone who holds the shift key while loading a CD into Windoze box a felon.
Re:People are still buying DRMd music. (Score:5, Insightful)
/. - 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.
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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. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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!
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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 solut
Re:People are still buying DRMd music. (Score:4, Funny)
"Equating Libertarianism to greed is a bit like equating free speech to hate speech."
As opposed to a Libertarian equating a waiting list for a movie from the public library to a Stalin-era Soviet Union breadline [rebirthofreason.com]?
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Re:People are still buying DRMd music. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:People are still buying DRMd music. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Yeah I think it's meaningless in Sweden as well because you can't say "haha but I told you I sold it as seen" if it's broken ..
some of us can work arouynd it without bitching (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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the iPod doesn't use Ogg, and I see no advantage to using wma.
Besides, audiobooks are voice only, 32bit is more then adequate, and mp3 is fine.
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You can work it out. Take how much you get paid an hour, divide it by 6. That's the going rate for 10 minutes of your life.
Re:People are still buying DRMd music. (Score:5, Informative)
Not that I'm all for DRM, this just isn't as big of a deal as the article makes it sound. 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.
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Re:People are still buying DRMd music. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 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. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
I'm sure they covered their legal ass on this, and
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If I'd bought a lot of music I doubt I would just let it get removed forever when I switched computer.
But I'd probably exist the seller to also let me redownload the same music to my new machine. Just log in and download the music I have registered as bought.
Re:People are still buying DRMd music. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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>If you RTFA, you'll see that no one is losing access to their music, 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.
What if their hard drive crashed and they're trying to load their backed-up songs onto a new computer? In that case they are screwed. Part of the issue here is that there's a problem but the users don't *realize* there's a problem until it's too late to do something. Yes, you rea
Re:People are still buying DRMd music. (Score:4, Insightful)
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...)
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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.
I agree wholeheartedly. I don't buy any DRM'd music, preferring to deal as directly with the artist as possible, through places like CD Baby [cdbaby.com], which eschew DRM in favor of straight MP3 downloads once you have purchased an album.
Re:People are still buying DRMd music. (Score:4, Informative)
Certainly not fixing the DRM issue, but, still an important detail.
Haha? (Score:5, Funny)
Come on, guys, what does it take so long to tag this story with the 'haha' tag??? Are you all asleep?
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Come on, guys, what does it take so long to tag this story with the 'haha' tag??? Are you all asleep?
Yes.
Insanity... (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Its not fraud to close a branch of a company.
Sure its annoying, but its perfectly legal.
How much would it cost to keep the servers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Leaving a DRM server online would cost them peanuts. Is it really worth all the bad publicity?
Re:How much would it cost to keep the servers? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wondered the same thing when Microsoft announced the end of its service.
Perhaps the contract with the music companies requires some type of licensing fees as long as the server is available online? Perhaps the contract with the music companies requires them to take the server down once the music service itself is discontinued? I can imagine either or both of these being true.
"It's not fraud..." (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:the real criminals (Score:5, Funny)
Here's one for you - now thats costumer service.. (Score:4, Funny)
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More Ammo (Score:2)
This is just more ammunition for when someone asks me why I care about DRM.
Thanks, Yahoo!, though to be honest I didn't know they had a music store either.
Excellent news! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Or maybe their customers are actually chanting "Yahoo!" over it. Maybe just with a different meaning to it... like in "D'oh!".
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Well duh? (Score:4, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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
Re:Well duh? (Score:5, Funny)
"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."
Oh no! How will our descendants survive without being able to appreciate the lyrical genius of K-Fed, NSYNC, and My Chemical Romance? It really is the end of the world!
Question! (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not a Lawyer (And I refuse to say IANAL - it took me 3 months to figure out what that meant), so I'm curious as to what the legal implications are for downloading DRM free versions of songs you LEGALLY own (in one form or another)?
I know that in the case of software, it's perfectly legal to download pirated versions providing you legitimately own it (ROMs in particular are a good example of this), but what about media?
Re:Question! (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm glad your homepage is broken =P
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I refuse to say IANAL - it took me 3 months to figure out what that meant
This website is very useful: Acronym Finder [acronymfinder.com]
Three months? Ever hear of "google"??? (Score:4, Informative)
Go to google.com, type "IANAL" into the little box...
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Well done on missing both the point of my post and the sarcasm held within it.
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right thought wrong reason.
Yahoo was mainly a subscription site, as most windows media sites are. once the servers stop you lose your subscriptions. They may rig the setup to keep playing for a year instead of a month, but sometime soon all that music you spent money on is gone.
Apple sells DRm, and DRM free tracks, you keep it working even if apple goes boom.
Yahoo Music is a Rental Service (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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According to their FAQ you can also buy individual songs : http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/music/music/getmusic/launch-11.html [yahoo.com]
(Disclaimer : I don't use Yahoo Music so I don't know if the FAQ is outdated or not)
Isn't it ironic... (Score:4, Interesting)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7522334.stm [bbc.co.uk]
I just hope that the BBC picks up this latest music industry/tech fiasco and asks the question...
"Who is looking after the consumer?"
Me, I'll always be buying the original CD (preferably from an indie artist!)
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So first the servers you check your DRM'd music against are taken down then you receive nasty letters/a reduction in service from your ISP/your ISP stops providing you a service/a possible fine if the law changes/etc... when you try and download songs you already own through eMule or BitTorrent so you end up buying the CD if you really care about the music.
It's genius, I never knew there were so many ways to pay for the same thing.
Why MSN Music store was going. (Score:5, Interesting)
So the trail leads back to the licence server - which Microsoft is turning off for its customers. Why is it doing that? According to Rob Bennett, who wrote the shock email, it was too complicated to support. "Every time there is an OS upgrade, you saw support issues. People would call in because they couldn't download licences. We had to write new code, new configurations each time,"
So it was too much hassle to support, and as for the customers who had purchased music, they thought forever - they could take a running jump.
For now, DRM doesn't interfere with my music (Score:2, Informative)
I buy several albums from iTunes a year (probably 20+ albums). Since I have a Mac, and an iPod, and I burn the music to CD to play in the car during my lengthy commute -- Apple's DRM doesn't really bother me. When possible, I buy their DRM-less albums, and I have occasionally used the "convert to MP3" feature so I could make an MP3 CD... but so far, Apple's DRM has not interfered with my music listening.
Maybe if I wanted/needed a different music player, or I cared about saving a few pennies and buying mu
long live Amazon (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:long live Amazon (Score:5, Informative)
Thank you very much for mentioning the Amazon MP3 store! :-)
In short, Amazon's MP3 store is the first truly viable alternative the iTunes Music Store for these these reasons:
1) The cost in many cases is much lower than iTMS on a per-song and per-album basis.
2) Amazon encodes their MP3's using the LAME 3.97 encoder with 256 kbps variable bit rate encoding, which results in excellent sound quality that is almost the same as the uncompressed CD original.
3) Because the MP3 files have no DRM restrictions, that means no hassles copying the music with third-party programs to your portable music player.
4) Amazon's MP3 downloader program automatically puts the playlist into either Windows Media Player 11.0 or iTunes, which means easy syncing with your favorite portable music player that uses these programs to copy music to your player.
It's small wonder why I've bought several albums through the Amazon MP3 store and are searching for more albums to download. That explains why older music stores that use DRM restrictions are rapidly falling by the wayside.
Re:long live Amazon (Score:4, Insightful)
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/)
Re:long live Amazon (Score:5, Interesting)
I go with AllOfMP3, now under a new name (that we dare not speak!). They offer all music in MP3 format using LAME or bladeenc in CBR or VBR modes. They offer a lot of music (I'd say about 35-40% on average for the stuff I listen to and 100% of the new stuff they add) in FLAC, Monkey's Audio, MPC, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, MP3, raw WAV, and probably a few formats that I'm forgetting. It's all DRM free, and $0.02/MB for downloading. Oh, and it works on any OS with a web browser that accepts cookies, and works outside of the United States. (Pair Firefox with DownThemAll for the downloads page and you've got your music downloading app.)
IANAL, but from what I've read they're legal in the US (they pay their licensing body fees). They're good, and the content industry hates them. They tried to pay the artists, but the body representing the artists rejected it.
And that is why (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
i have an excellent comment to make (Score:5, Funny)
please send $5 to my pay pal account to read my comment
(oh man, i'm going to be a millionaire! it works for the music industry!)
Re:i have an excellent comment to make (Score:5, Funny)
*torrents comment*
Or 3...developing profiles for targetted marketing (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
I know video can go dark, but shouldn't music go quiet?
Re: (Score:2)
I was about to call you a grammar nazi, but then I thought that maybe you prefer being called a semantics nazi.
Obligatory 'PlaysForSure' reference (Score:2)
Customers who have purchased music from Microsoft's now-defunct MSN Music store are now facing a decision they never anticipated making: commit to which computers (and OS) they want to authorize forever, or give up access to the music they paid for. Why? Because Microsoft has decided that it's done supporting the service and will be turning off the MSN Music license servers by the end of this summer.
article link [arstechnica.com]
S/PDIF Interfaces can save your music (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to save your Yahoo! music, you can re-record it using two S/PDIF interfaces without losing any quality. There are no D/A conversions involved. You just need some decent recording software. Just tell Windows to use the S/PDIF as the default audio output device.
On Linux, I recommend Ardour for recording. www.ardour.org
On Windows, Audacity does a nice job.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
the S/PDIF output of such compressed audio file has already the audio artifacts from that compression (excluding "lossless" compression formats)
Converting this raw output back to a compressed file format will introduce artifacts AGAIN to the resulting wave (double compression), sounding awful enough.
Re:S/PDIF Interfaces can save your music (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to save your Yahoo! music, you can re-record it using two S/PDIF interfaces without losing any quality.
This is not something I have researched, so I'm making a good number of assumptions and qualified guesses here. I'm sure someone will set me straight if I'm way off.
I may be missing something, but unless you can manage to get Windows to output the raw unencrypted data stream, I don't see how this would help any.
In my experience Windows will take the audio and make a PCM stream out of it if you tell it to use S/PDIF as default device. Which means you end up with much the same as you would if you burned to CD and used that as a source for further processing. Either way, you end up having to add a lossy step somewhere along the way to make it practically useful.
Where's the list of these failures? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is anyone keeping a list somewhere of all the places that have folded or closed a service and have as a result left people with unusable content? This is at least the third story I've read on /. about this sort of stunt, and we've also read where DRM supporters are always saying this sort of thing never happens, I'd love to see that list stuffed in their mouth.
I'm no fan of DRM, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Whenever I do buy songs online, I buy them a store that sells them at 320kbps in .mp3 form with no restrictions whatsoever.
I really don't like DRM. I've been bitten by it in the past with iTunes locking me out after too many computers were authorised to play tracks I legally purchased. Anyway. The argument coming from this story against DRM doesn't make much sense to me. "The validation servers are offline". All that's showing is that the one possible benefit that can come out of DRM is no longer there. And in this specific area it's at the same level as non-DRM music. That's a tad confusing so I'll explain further.
The only positive I can ever see coming out of DRM systems is the fact that once you've "bought" something, you can download it again and again. Say if you reformatted or something. This is obviously negated by limitations such as the above iTunes example. However other DRM services like Steam pull this off brilliantly. I've downloaded my Steam games several times after formats and computer changes, and they work fine. Now while this is a limited concept in most DRM systems, it's non existant in non-DRM online stores. I don't know any online store without any kind of DRM that allows you to download a song or an album and infinite number of times once you've purchased it.
So tying this back to the story, the validation servers going off-line simply means that if you lose a song, you can't re-download it. Just like if you bought a CD, or downloaded from another music store without DRM.
Well that sucks... (Score:4, Informative)
Furthermore, Yahoo Music's 0.99c songs are all, as far as I know, Non-drm'd MP3's. People that bought the songs should have no problem listening to them. DRM is really a non-issue here, as it doesn't affect anyone in a manner that they wouldn't expect.
Two words: Class Action (Score:2, Interesting)
You bought a song. You have the right to hear it. You have the right to transfer it to another playing device (i.e., computer).
Your CD is a property. The right to hear a licensed song is a property too, despite what the license may claim.
Now, the second party pulls the license away. It renders your property nontransferable, hence eliminating some of your property rights. The court may monetize the lost r
The background story (Score:4, Informative)
Just a little FYI.
If anyone remembers this more clearly, please let me know.
I only like the unlimited streaming music (Score:4, Interesting)
I have no interest in buying music to download and I don't use their software to rip my CD's.
While I am no fan of DRM I actually like having unlimited streaming music that I can play on both my laptop and my music player.
To me these services are only useful as an online music source that I can customize. I can listen to exactly what I want. I like creating my own playlists as well having them auto created according to what I listen to. This, to me, is the only real value in these services.
I have Yahoo Music (which was acquired from MusicMatch when they went under) and have now converted it to a Rhapsody account (who aquired my Yahoo Music account. I only hope that Rhapsody stays afloat before my 1 year subscription expires.
So far I am very pleased with Rhapsody. Much more so than with Yahoo Music and Music Match. Mostly because the player actually works all of the time (crossing fingers). The only downside that I have noted is that some of the tracks (about 15%) that I had from Yahoo are not available in Rhapsody. Most of them I do not care about. Those that I really like I will buy the CD and rip.
Just my two cents.
In defense of Yahoo Music service (sort of) (Score:5, Informative)
I am/was a subscriber to the Yahoo Music Service. I loved it. I had extremely convenient access to almost everything. I no longer worried about what I owned and just focused on rating stuff.
I believe that the value for my money that I got for this service - even if it dies today - is much greater then with buying CD's or buying individual tracks from iTunes. I paid a reasonable amount of money ( $10 a month) for a great music experience.
Let's face it, all of this music is pretty crappy sound quality, so I don't want to buy tracks at $1 a pop that will be obsolete in 5 years when higher quality multi-track formats become available. The stuff from Yahoo is 192Kbps WMA which is reasonably good by today's standards but still pretty crappy.
And now that the service is going dark, everything is transferred to Rhapsody. I have 8 months remaining on my Yahoo account and they are transferring that 8 months to rhapsody, along with my music collection (if I want). So I do not loose the music as others seem to be implying. As before, I have to keep paying to keep my collection alive - that is the deal that I have agreed to.
BUT now the negative.
From the FAQ it appears that Yahoo is not going to transfer my music rating to the Rhapsody service. The music rating ARE my collection, so this really screws me up. If someone wrote an app that culled my rating from the Yahoo Music service I would be thrilled.
Rhapsody is Real. That sucks. I'm scared to install their application on my computer.
Rhapsody is only available in the US. Yahoo Music was available in other countries. What are the users in other countries supposed to do?