Today Apple and EMI Music announced that Apple's iTunes store will start selling songs without digital rights management (DRM). This means in practice that you are free to copy those songs on any device you happen to have and burn unlimited CDs for your own use. Something like this was expected as Steve Jobs wrote his public letter about DRM some time ago but still it came as a surprise.

DRM has been dead idea for all its existence. As human needs to see and hear digital content like movies and songs in analog format (light&sound waves) there is no way to prevent copying. Quality of the copy can be slightly worse but it did not prevent people copying VHS movies. And making a copy of DRM protected content is just a matter of time there is no real need to harass ordinary customer.

Apple and EMI Music were not first ones to announce such idea. There are already several online music stores operating with similar basis. However, this announcement is the first one from major players and it is worth of noticing that Apple has some foothold on movie industry, too. Unless Apple and EMI Music fail miserably with this idea, which is unlikely, there will be other companies following them.

It is hard to find real losers with this trend. Consumers are winning and those music producers and distributors implementing this are winning. However, companies developing and applying annoying DRM features are losing and I do not feel sorry.

EMI Music's press release