Copyleft: the magazine

We’ve seen this before, but it still hurts every time. Walmart.com’s digital music service has announced in an e-mail to customers that it is going to shut down its DRM servers in about a week as it switches over to a completely DRM-free shopping experience. So, as of October 9, all you’ll be able to buy from Walmart.com is MP3s without digital rights management, but all the non-MP3 music you bought from them will no longer be transferable (without that obnoxious step of burning to CD and re-ripping them into MP3s).

While it’s nice to see the world’s largest retailer finally giving its customers what they want, those consumers that bought into the old ways of buying music are still getting hurt by the music industry’s previous unwillingness to give-up digital rights management. Sadly, this is a cautionary tale both to those of us who buy media, and other media outlets like the movie industry, that, in the end, DRM will only hurt you.

(via Ars Technica and Engadget)

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