No DRM: Can it Be?

It's about damned time.

Record Labels Contemplate Unrestricted Digital Music

Executives of several technology companies meeting here at Midem, the annual global trade fair for the music industry, said over the weekend that at least one of the four major record companies could move toward the sale of unrestricted digital files in the MP3 format within months.

I completely understand the purpose and use of DRM (Digital Rights Management) on music files, but I don't believe that the use of a product I purchase should be restricted to what some suits at record labels say it should. In a few years when the next hot Portable Media Player comes along to beat out the iPod, all those folks who've spent hundreds (thousands?) of dollars on files purchased through iTunes are going to be pretty pissed that they can't listen to their libraries on anything but an iPod (at least, not without a lot of wasted time and effort.)