Digital Home Thoughts: DRM is Dead, Long Live DRM

"The fact is that DRM isn't making the grade. It inconveniences users and doesn't particularly protect intellectual property owners. My sense is that this position is being broadly, if slowly, adopted in the music industry, and much of what we saw from Jobs this week was his attempt to rush to the front of the mob. And I applaud that, because a clear call to action by someone with plenty of skin in the game is needed if anything is going to change. What happens, then, to DRM? I don't think it will simply go away. Rather, I think it will evolve toward a new paradigm based less on prevention than on punishment. Keeping people from copying music or moving it from device to device hasn't worked well, so why not let them copy and move at will yet still offer some piracy deterrence? It's not that extra copy of "Stairway to Heaven" that's the problem, it's the 100,000 extra copies distributed by some bootleg service or copied on mass-production pirate CDs."

Well, Cringely and I agree on something for once. With last week's challenge to the industry from Mr. Jobs, the whole DRM scandal had a little fuel added to its fire. How do you think Steve's open letter from last week will affect things? What is the future of DRM, now that we all got used to it being here to stay? Think we'll see DRM-free tunes from ITMS anytime soon? :wink: