Legal Research

A month after MSN Music attempted to pull the plug on supporting the DRM music files it had sold consumers, now Yahoo! Music is doing the same thing.  The online music vendor announced it will cease operations in September.  After that it will no longer provide license keys or authorize song playback on additional computers.  This leaves purchasers unable to transfer songs or access them after changing their operating systems, or buying a new computer. 

The fix?  Yahoo! says customers should back up the files to CD.  Huh?  This puts the would-be law-abiding customers who PAID for the music in the untenable position of making backup copies without the permission of various and sundry copyright holders, many of whom would undoubtedly dispute the legality of such back-ups. 

The lesson here is that the purchaser of DRM music is at the mercy of the vendor.  If they decide to deactivate their DRM servers, that leaves the purchaser with only a memory of the songs they thought they owned.  It's only your music for as long as the vendor keeps its servers up.  Hmm.  What's the average life-span of an online business?