Yahoo Music sent out a notice yesterday to all the users of the Yahoo Music Store letting them know, amongst other things, that they’d be shutting down their DRM servers in September.  As Dave over at Evil Genius Chronicles so emphatically put it today, it is yet another reason why you should never purchase music that includes digital rights management.

The only way after September you’ll be able to move your music around or play it is if you decide to burn your music to compact disk and re-import it to your machine (or alternatively bust the DRM with an underground tool). This is because every time you use your purchased music, your player will go attempt to go out and ping the Yahoo DRM server to verify proper ownership. When it is no longer there, your player will simply assume you’re a pirate and not play the music.

Interestingly enough, this circumvention by CD method was the course of action suggested by Yahoo in the service’s fairwell email to its users. The PDF embedded via Scribd below.

yahoo music drm email - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: yahoo music drm email

RealTechNews is reporting that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has issued a set of demands from Yahoo (as they did when Microsoft pulled this same stunt) including an apology to their customers as well as a full refund for the cost of all the music purchased.

We’d be inclined to agree, but we’d settle for a simple executable designed to undo the DRM to turn our Yahoo music into universally playable music.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Sony Connect Music Service Shutting DownYahoo Kills Yahoo Music Unlimited, Signs Deal With RhapsodyYahoo Saying Goodbye to More European BusinessesYahoo Starts Layoffs While Deciding What To Do NextYahoo’s Playing with our Mashing Emotions TodaySkype Worm Causes Video-Sharing ShutdownYahoo OMG. Get Your Celeb Gossip Here.

Source:Mashable!

Redlasso, the web service we occasionally used here at Mashable to illustrate a point using footage from mainstream television, has shuttered their service for the time being in the face of a lawsuit being brought against them by NBC Universal and Fox.

According to a press release issued by the company today, in light of the litigation, they’re cutting off all access to the video side of the service to bloggers, but retaining the audio clipping functions as well as their business services.

On their site, they offer a final note to the disgruntled bloggers like myself:

We would like to thank you for your continued support of Redlasso. You have been essential to making Redlasso a household name online. Unfortunately, due to the legal actions taken against Redlasso by two networks, we are left with no alternative but to suspend access to our video search and clipping Beta site FOR THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE. The networks have provided a big blow to the blogger community’s right to exercise the first amendment and comment on newsworthy events. It is anti-Web. During this service suspension, we will continue our conversations with content providers, with the goal of establishing formal partnerships that will quickly help us restore access to the Beta site.

It’s a highly unfortunate end to a very valuable service.  Being able to include clips from newsworthy events was a nice luxury to have while it lasted (we used it in a few cases, including a local news broadcast concerning Loren Feldman, and a CNN clip detailing an investigation on child pornography controls on Craigslist).

At the moment, our embeds still work, but we’re unable to use our account to make any clippings of current TV broadcasts. Michael Massnick made a salient observation on the matter today over at TechDirt:

This is especially odd since TV stations are in the business of attracting viewers, and giving people an easy way to promote your content to others (at absolutely no cost to you) would seem like a good plan for attracting more viewers. However, it would appear that the execs suing believe that companies should have to pay TV studios to promote their TV shows.

It was a gutsy move by RedLasso, and I had no doubt that it was all going to end badly for them when they opened the service, but Mike has a very good point.  All the usage of these clips could have possibly lead to were increased viewership of those networks’ content, and possible increased brand affinity.

Given the fact that newspapers continue to be upset when more than a few words are quoted on a blog (and for that matter some bloggers even have a hard time seeing themselves promoted elsewhere), I’m not particularly surprised to see TV networks blowing a gasket when we use their content to supplement our own.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Hippy Bloggers of the World UniteFox Clips on Your Blog, Thanks to BrightcoveBebo London Office (Video)Craigslist’s Child Sex: Who’s To Blame? [smcb]Verizon Reportedly Drops Loren Feldman Over TechNiggaDivShare Direct Goes Free, For NowPayPerPost Video Ads