If you find yourself purchasing videos from Sony’s Playstation Network, be wary: You may want to read the Terms of Service thoroughly or you could risk the possibility of losing all of your purchased digital goods thanks to Sony’s DRM policy.

An Ars Technica forum-goer dubbed Noise found this out the hard way and warns others of this unfair policy. Having deleted purchased content from his hard drive in order to free up space - he later found that he was unable to re-download the videos.

“Purchased content can be downloaded to a single Playstation 3 or a single PSP system.” “Content cannot be redownloaded once it has been downloaded to either a Playstation 3 or PSP system.” “Consumer service can issue a redownload as a one-time courtesy, as provided by our guidelines, for the title to allow the consumer to go back and download the movie from their PSN download list.”

Noise may have lucked out this time with his “one-time courtesy” of a free download for video he’s already paid for but it’s his money and they should be his to keep for good. May this be a lesson and warning to all those who use the Playstation Network. Don’t let Sony screw you out of your money.

Link [via]

Yahoo announced that it’s shutting down its DRM servers as of September 30, 2008. Anyone whose turned over hard cash towards Yahoo Music will lose the ability to recover it or transfer it to a new PC. Further proving DRM’s worthlessness, Yahoo even had the nerve to tell its customers to burn CDs and re-rip the tracks they bought, before the chance is over. Haven’t we learned anything from old DRM techniques?

Shame on you, Yahoo. I purchase music that I rightfully own and you’re not going to make it available to me? There’s a word for that: theft. Isn’t DRM supposed to be beneficial? It’s like Communism, it sounds great on paper, then it’s executed poorly. DRM only makes things harder for legal users. Legal users are the most important users of all, and Yahoo just fucked them in the ass. What’s it going to take to have proper DRM that benefits the user? A CD that self-destructs after it is copied.

Link (via)