p2pnet news view | Music:- “If Yahoo! wants to make things right, it should do the following: Issue a full public apology to your Yahoo! Music customers. Offer to refund the purchase price of the affected downloads or, at the customer’s option, provide replacements from an online store that offers the same tracks in a DRM-free format.”

That was the EFF’s (Electronic Frontier Foundation) Corynne McSherry (right) on the news that Yahoo is killing off its always late and totally unlamented music store.

Now, “Yahoo Music is offering refunds to anyone who bought songs from the service,” says CNET News.

Not only but also, “If a customer would prefer music over a refund, Yahoo is looking for a way to give the customer copies of the purchased songs in the DRM-free MP3 format, according to a Yahoo representative,” says the story.

Said McSherry when the news first broke »»»

The ironically named Yahoo! Music Unlimited Store will shut its virtual doors in September, and, as of October 1, will no longer provide license keys for music purchased from the store, nor will it authorize song playback on additional computers. That means Yahoo! Music customers will not be able to transfer songs to “unauthorized computers” or access the songs after changing operating systems. Yahoo! advises customers to back up their music to a CD if they want to be able to access it in the future. In other words, Yahoo! wants its customers to invest more time, labor and money in order to continue to enjoy the music for which they have already paid. In fact, the more music they bought, the more work they’ll have to do. What is worse, this suggestion could put customers at legal risk, as they may not have documentation of purchase. Furthermore, there is no certainty that all relevant copyright owners would agree that making such backup copies without permission is lawful.

We’ve warned music fans for years that they could lose their DRM-wrapped music if vendors decided to withdraw support for it. Nonetheless, we hoped that the experience of MSN Music would encourage other vendors to think twice before making their customers pay the price for the vendors’ own faulty business decisions.

MSN Music?

It, “shut down and announced that it would stop issuing DRM keys, only to change its mind last month and say it would continue issuing keys for another three years,” says CNET, adding:

“As noted by Michael Spiegelman, Yahoo’s senior director of music, Microsoft just delayed the withdrawing of support for songs.”

. .Stumble It!

totally unlamented - Yahoo Music store d-e-a-d DEAD, July 25, 2008
CNET News -Yahoo Music to offer refunds, what about MSN?, July 28, 2008

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 10:27 am and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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