In an interesting essay covered in a Wired article, Steve Jobs of Apple has called for an end to DRM (Digital Rights Management) for music. Apple has found that, on average, only 3% of music on a typical iPod uses the Apple FairPlay DRM; the rest is music that has no DRM at all. Typically, this means most people are simply ripping music from CDs and putting it on their iPod.
Apple has been heavily criticized for kowtowing to the record companies, but Jobs makes it clear Apple has always done so reluctantly, and would happily abandon DRM on the iPod and for the iTunes software. DRM's main accomplishment has been to annoy music lovers, who chafe under the restrictions that limit what devices can play a song, how many times it can be shared, and how it can be shared. Apple's proposal to end DRM puts the target squarely on the record companies, who continue to whine about piracy while suing grandmothers without computers and fourteen year old girls. As I have said in the past, it is mystifying to me that a business would go to such great lengths to alienate its customers, and would state in public that it thinks its customers are all crooks.