DRM, digital rights management, that little key that is encoded along with your music or movies or whatever else the maker or distributor doesn't want you to copy or own too much of.

DRM has had complaints and issues since day one but two prominent Internet companies saw it as a good business model and so implemented it with their online music stores.Well, with time comes financial analysis and Microsoft realized that it was costing too much money to run the remote servers that 'authorized' the DRM keys to the digital music purchased.

So they decided to shut down the servers.

This would mean that if you purchased music from their store you could continue to listen to it as long as you didn't re-install your operating system, upgrade computers or transfer it to an unauthorized computer. In other words, your music now has a finite lifespan.

The feedback given to Microsoft made them take a few steps back and now they are operating their servers until 2011. Yahoo has blindly, strong-armed by the record labels, followed them down the same path. The problem with this path is that it has some traps to fall into.

The first is that Yahoo is recommending that you back up your music to disk, which could reduce sound quality. It also may not be legal. The next is that most people have not been provided with a clear receipt indicating that they do own the music they're being encouraged to back-up.

In short, this doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the online purchase of music, movies or any other type of media locked by DRM. The irony is the more music people bought, the more they supported Yahoo's business model, the more they lose out in the end. For further analysis, see Corynne McSherry's legal take on this.

The deadline for your music being authorized isn't very far away - September 30th, 2008. X

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