James Delahunty
30 May 2005 19:29
Robert Chapin, owner of Chapin Information Services, Inc. has been trying to get Yahoo to fix a security flaw he found in Y! Music Unlimited that could allow a user to download songs for free. The Music Unlimited service is seen as a sort of music rental service, like Napster To Go and Real's new subscription service. For $4.99 customers can download songs and store them on compatible portable devices, but as soon as they stop paying for the service the music would simple disappear.
In order to burn a song to a CD, users would have to pay 79c for the track. Once it is burned to the CD, it is free of any DRM protection and could easily be ripped into MP3 format using any of various tools on the Internet. Tools like PyMusique and Musik allow users to purchase songs from iTunes without having any DRM protection attached, but these tools don’t make it possible to obtain downloads for free.
"This afternoon we checked to confirm the problem is still live. We downloaded a copy of The Moody Blues - Never Blame The Rainbows For The Rain.wma. It isn't going to be one of my personal favourites, but it does illustrate the point. The music on Yahoo can be obtained quickly, easily, and freely." Chapin told AfterDawn.com in an email. Understandably however, he has not reveal just yet how to get the music for free and most likely wont until Yahoo fixes the problem.
Source:
p2pnet
Chapin Information Services (Press Release)
Thanks to Jon Newton of p2pnet for bringing this to my attention.