Thursday, April 24, 2008, 6:28pm
Customers who have purchased music from Microsoft's now-defunct MSN Music store are now facing a decision they never anticipated making: commit to which computers (and OS) they want to authorize forever, or give up access to the music they paid for. Why? Because Microsoft has decided that it's done supporting the service and will be turning off the MSN Music license servers by the end of this summer.
What would happen if Apple went belly up? How many people would be stranded and unable to reauthorize their music libraries when they changed computers? This is why you never purchase (and by purchase, I mean lease) DRM'ed media.