If you haven’t heard already, Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs recently spoke out about Digital Rights Management (DRM) and the minimal effect this control system is having on limiting the amount of illegal music downloads. He offers several solutions to this problem but the one that makes the most sense to me? Link
…abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.
