Yahoo! Advises Customers To Break Copy Protection On Music
Yahoo is not only closing their music store, they’re advising customers to circumvent their copy protection by burning music to a cd and re-ripping the tracks without DRM:
After September 30, 2008, you will not be able to transfer songs to unauthorized computers or re-license these songs after changing operating systems. Please note that your purchased tracks will generally continue to play on your existing authorized computers unless there is a change to the computer’s operating system.
For any user who purchased tracks through Yahoo! Music Unlimited, we highly recommend that you back up the purchased tracks to an audio CD before the closing of the Store on September 30, 2008. Backing up your music to an audio CD will allow you to copy the music back to your computer again if the license keys for your original music files cannot be retrieved.
I’m glad to see these protection schemes collapsing, but seriously — how much would it really cost a huge multi-national corporation like Yahoo to maintain a single license server in perpetuity? Avoiding the bad publicity that goes with screwing your customers should be worth a few thousand dollars a year.
