Posted 07/25/08 at 02:54:27 PM by Paul LIlly

As if the tech community needed any more proof that DRM schemes only serve to hurt paying customers, Yahoo has decided to remind everyone why the whole concept sucks in the first place. Come September 30, Yahoo will shut off support for Yahoo Music, locking customers who purchased their tracks through the service from being able to transfer their tunes to a new hard drive or PC.

Here we go again. Microsoft pulled the same stunt when it pulled the plug on its MSN Music service. Amid community outcries, the software giant eventually caved to pressure and reversed its decision, offering customers a reprieve "until at least the end of 2011."

Who knows if Yahoo will end up doing the same thing, but as it stands now, customers who want to keep playing their purchased music after the end of September are being prevented from transferring their songs to another machine or even performing a clean OS install on their existing PC. Or they can choose to transfer their music library to RealNetwork's Rhapsody music service. And while customers decide between losing their music or jumping through hoops, pirates will continue to snag the songs they want through Limewire, Piratebay, and everywhere else where pirated music runs rampant.

Can DRM's death knell sound soon enough?

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3

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drm, windows, Software, music, Yahoo, support

Posted 06/30/08 at 08:52:29 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Here is a bit of news that might have music lovers rhapsodic. RealNetworks-owned online music service Rhapsody has MP3 music sans any Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection. This entails that users can do anything with the music they buy. If you thought that piracy fearing labels would never back such an initiative then you were wrong.

Major labels will continue to make their music available through Rhapsody. They perceive DRM protection to be some sort of a sales impediment as it deters many music lovers from buying such music online – scarecrow effect. Rhapsody’s online music store offers a single song download for $.99 and an entire album for $9.99. Rhapsody has certainly taken the attack to iTunes.

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5

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drm, Software, apple, itunes, iPod, Rhapsody, online music store, realnetworks

Posted 06/27/08 at 07:15:48 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Microsoft has once again furnished proof of the abysmal levels of concern it has for Xbox 360 owners and their plethora of console related woes. It took MS a whole year to come up with a fix for the flawed Xbox Live Arcade DRM.

Gamers who upgraded their console or replaced it – for obvious reasons – could not play the arcade titles, they had previously bought, while offline. They had to be online to play the games. But MS has eventually made amends and fixed the flawed DRM in form of an online tool. Is Xbox 360 the most flawed gadget of the last gazillion years? A ‘yes’ would not be taken as an exaggeration if you have endured a “Red Ring of Death.”

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drm, gaming, microsoft, Xbox 360, fix, arcade games

Posted 05/14/08 at 07:27:37 PM by Quinn Norton

Our latest columnist, Quinn Norton, explains where she stands on the thorny issues of copyright, fair use, and piracy.

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drm, copyright, fair use, dmca, quinn norton, byte rights, pirate bay

Posted 05/09/08 at 04:48:48 PM by One4yu2c

AMD to skip 8-core processors and jump straight to 12-core, Xbox 360 getting a GPU die shrink, see how much your bank account might be worth to hackers, and more!

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2

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amd, drm, Security, processor, console, multicore, quadcore, octocore

Posted 03/30/08 at 03:01:57 PM by Zack Stern

Hollywood math: HDCP + AACS = PITA²

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0

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drm, encryption, mpaa, copy protection, HDCP, bd+, aacs, slysoft, anydvd

Posted 11/09/07 at 06:45:44 PM by Tom Edwards

Join the Maximum PC editors for a rousing review of the week's tech news and top-notch how-to advice.

Subscribe: http://feeds.feedburner.com/maximumpc/1337

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3

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intel, drm, lan party, Google, android, x48 chipset, MLB

Posted 10/26/07 at 10:45:31 PM by Mark Soper

Vista's activation DRM may shut you down for 'too many' hardware changes, even if you changed drivers, not hardware. Here's how to avoid getting nailed - and some advice for Microsoft.

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vista, drm, windows, Software, upgrade, news, Licensing, piracy, activation, driver