Originally posted by Rosuav
But spending time, money, and effort on DRM is not financially viable unless it encourages sales.
iTunes and their store has their own DRM implimentation (stuff you buy can only be played on a certain number of regestered players, and numerous other things) and their sales don't show any sign of slowing down any time soon. I agree though that they might need to rethink some of the stuff, but it's not a problem that's going away. The real issue here is that the RIAA is behind the curve and trying to catch up. They didn't perceive that PCs would be a threat until it was much, much too late (and to be honest they weren't for a very long time... not until the mid-late 90's when a handful of things clicked into place... mass use of the internet, larger/cheaper hard drives/storage media, faster connection speeds, and the invention of P2P-style transfer protocols). Right now they're scrambling to figure something out, and it'll probably be several years until they have something figured out, and even then it'll be several more to get the majors on the same page (especially since Sony is notorious for being stupid about conforming to other people's standards). It's all up in the air right now, and to be terribly honest, Steve Jobs' voice doesn't have as much weight as his fanboys would like to believe. The big four are the big four for a reason, and without their catalogs, iTunes would be pretty fucked. And I can guarantee that the majors would be just fine without the iTunes store, so there isn't much they can do.