San Francisco - Yahoo (NASD: YHOO) has announced that it will provide refunds to any consumers who purchased songs locked by digital rights management (DRM), which otherwise would have eventually become unplayable after the company discontinues support for the technology. Yahoo had initially not offered any compensation to patrons of its Yahoo Music Unlimited service who purchased song downloads; had they needed to reauthorize the tracks on a new computer, for instance, they would have found the songs unplayable.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and others pressured Yahoo to follow in the steps of Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) -- which was also set to make DRM-locked tracks from its shuttered MSN Music store unplayable, but later announced it would continue to support the DRM technology until at least 2011.

"Yahoo's decision sets a good precedent for when this problem inevitably arises again," the EFF said in a statement.

"Vendors that sold DRM-crippled music must either continue supporting tech neither they or their customers like -- as MSN Music chose to do -- or take Yahoo's path and fairly compensate consumers with refunds."

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/37ryi (EFF statement)

http://snipurl.com/37ryq (DMW previous coverage)