unlike such earlier vendors of DRM-ed music files as Sony, Microsoft and Yahoo, Wal-Mart is giving its customers far less notice. As the company explained in an e-mail sent to customers (reproduced at the Boing Boing blog), the music will start to die in less than two weeks:

Beginning October 9, we will no longer be able to assist with digital rights management issues for protected WMA files purchased from Walmart.com. If you do not back up your files before this date, you will no longer be able to transfer your songs to other computers or access your songs after changing or reinstalling your operating system or in the event of a system crash. Your music and video collections will still play on the originally authorized computer.

Wal-Mart provided a little more context in a post on its own blog, which reiterated the suggestion offered in the original e-mail: Burn your purchases to an audio CD now, then pop that CD right back into your computer and copy its contents in an un-"protected" format, such as MP3 (the format that Wal-Mart's site has been offering songs in since last August).

For more inforamtion, check out this Washington Post story.