• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, October 10, 2008

Wal-Mart has reversed a previous decision to end support for DRM after Thursday, Oct. 9. The company now says it will continue to offer support for the digital rights management software that came bundled with tracks it sold.

"Based on feedback from our customers, we have decided to maintain our digital rights management (DRM) servers for the present time," the company said in an e-mail to consumers, Engadget reported today.

The decision marked the third time in recent months that a major music retailer has backed away from a decision to abandon customers who downloaded music bundled with DRM. Yahoo and MSN also announced recently that they intended to end DRM support for music they had sold, only to quickly reverse themselves when faced with pushback from groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Had the digital music retailers not changed their minds, consumers wouldn't have been able to play the music they had purchased on any new computers unless they burned the tracks to CDs. Doing so would have cost time and money, and resulted in lower quality tracks.

While Wal-Mart's reversal marks a victory for consumers, it's only a temporary one. Wal-Mart, MSN and Yahoo likely aren't going to continue DRM support forever. There's no reason to think that market leader Apple will continue to support its DRM forever, either.