Rhapsody stuck with extended outage

It was rough seas for Rhapsody this week as a large outage prevented some users from being able to listen to the music they'd purchased. For some it's been a more minor issue, for others it's been a multiday outage – with someone down since Friday.

The comment ringside from Rhapsody has been that it is a known issue, affects a small group of users and will be fixed as soon as possible. Pretty much par for the course in any modern service outage, though the issue at hand here goes beyond just accessing music. It extends, of course, into DRM. In order for a service like Rhapsody to work, it has to be continually updated from their servers to allow content to be used. Even the slightest of bumps can render this content unusable, showing again the double-edged sword that is DRM.

Obviously, there are no “rights” when it comes to Digital Rights Management. There are privileges, or perhaps blessings, but if service can be cut off at any time there's certainly no right to using it. This is not the first incident this year of people being denied Rhapsody service, either. In September there were extended outages due to “growth”, along with a scattering of minor outages over the past few months.