In what must surely sound the death knell for Digital Rights Management as we know it, Apple have announced the ditching of DRM protection on music bought through their iTunes store. DRM is the mechanism that prevents you copying downloaded music onto the device of your choice, and is a huge disincentive for the more technically-astute to buying from places like iTunes. As a piracy prevention measure it never achieved anything but the inconveniencing of those that actually did choose to pay for their music. I doubt I’ll ever bother to download and install iTunes anyway, especially after using Amazon’s MP3 Store
Update: It appears that DRM-free MP3 files downloaded from iTunes can still be linked back to the purchaser by way of an email address embedded in the file. Is that a form of Digital Rights Management? It doesn’t seem to have been used as such in the past, but who knows how this trackable tag may be used or abused in the future. However, if you only use the music for personal and non-commercial use as per the licencing agreement you should have little to worry about.
