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Yahoo! informed customers of its subscription music download service that it will increase pricing for users who transfer their tunes onto portable devices or CDs.

Yahoo! forwarded an e-mail to its Yahoo Music Unlimited subscribers late Thursday telling customers that it plans to double the fee it charges for the so-called unlimited service from $4.99 per month to $9.99 per month, for people who buy the service on an annual basis.

Yahoo said people who subscribe to the download service on a monthly basis will see their memberships increase from $6.99 per month to $11.99 per month.

Unlike subscribers to Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes music service, who pay 99 cents per song download and own the music forever thereafter, Yahoo’s service more closely mimics the offerings of Napster LLC and RealNetworks Inc., which allow users to download as many songs as they wish for use on their computers, but levee additional fees for permanent ownership of the digital content.

In addition to the higher subscription fee, Yahoo charges subscribers 79 cents per download for music they want to keep for usage on a portable device or to burn onto CDs.

Yahoo claims that its service still represents the best deal on the market.

Yahoo! is offering existing customers of the Music Unlimited service the opportunity to lock in at the current subscription price of $59.88 for one more year. Customers who do not wish to transfer files to mobile devices will continue to pay only $6.99 per month for the service.

Yahoo Inc.said Wednesday it will bar chat rooms that promote sex between minors and adults and restrict all chat rooms to users 18 and older.

The changes come under an agreement with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning.”This is about protecting kids,” Bruning said.

Spitzer said authorities did not have to resort to litigation. He said Yahoo, “acting as a good corporate citizen, … did the right thing. We asked them to create a filter to stop this kind of thing and they have done so.”

In June, while still in discussions with the attorneys general, Yahoo voluntarily closed its user-created chat rooms following complaints that some had names suggesting they facilitated illegal conduct, including sex between adults and minors.

Among the illicit chat rooms removed were those with labels such as “girls 13 or up for much older men,” “8-12 yo girls for older men,” and “teen girls for older fat men.” Many of these were located within the “Schools and Education” and “Teen” chat categories.

An undercover investigator, posing as a 14-year-old while visiting one of those chat rooms, received 35 personal messages of a sexual nature over a single 25-minute period, the attorneys general said.

Spitzer and Bruning said they launched their investigations earlier this year after receiving tips that children had unfettered access to adult chat rooms.

Other measure announced under the agreement:
_Yahoo! will make it easier to report any threats to child safety, give priority to such complaints and designate specific employees to do so.
Yahoo! will develop educational materials and feature them on the Yahoo! network, promoting the safe use of chat rooms.

Yahoo! will donate $175,000 to the National

Yahoo! and TiVo plan to announce a deal today that will connect Yahoo’s online service to TiVo’s set-top boxes, which, in addition to recording television programs, have a largely unused capability to connect to the Internet, the New York Times said on Monday.

The deal will allow TiVo, which has been struggling to differentiate its service from video recorders offered by cable and satellite companies, to offer a range of content and services linked to the Internet, the paper said.

Conversely, Yahoo! is working to move its services from personal computers to other devices, including mobile phones and – by way of devices like TiVo – the television set.

TiVo users will be able to use Yahoo’s television listings to find programs and, by ticking the appropriate boxes, send instructions to their TiVos to record those shows, the paper said.

In coming months, TiVo users will be able to view on their televisions pictures that have been stored on the Yahoo Photos site, as well as local weather and traffic information from Yahoo. Absent from the deal is a way for TiVo users to watch video via Yahoo, the paper said

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