Do remember though that DRM is NOT apples fault. Finally as sales of online music grow, they have been able to get around DRM with most of the major labels. I still feel that of all the DRM music out there, Apples system worked the best. I never had one issue here.
I am glad though that the music industry has agreed and Apple is finally able to ditch the DRM. It will make it easier for people especially with non Apple branded MP3 players and many computers.
Apple didn't create DRM, but they do love it in the right circumstances. OS X is one big peice of DRM, preventing Apple TV from playing anything other than h.264 is a form of DRM, Apple actually benefitted from iTunes DRM for years, because it effectively killed the other MP3 players, Apple's artificial crippling of things like Airport and USB drives to prevent them from being used as Time Machine drives was a form of protectionism (sure this was removed, but lets be honest about motives here), the new Miniports preventing HDMI connections to non-compliant screens is a form of DRM.
It is not ONLY Apple that has done this, and they are not to blame for much of the current state. However, if they keep trumpeting themselves as somekind of crusador against DRM and its derivatives, one could get aeriously annoyed with that level of hypocracy. It's a bit like Microsoft trumpeting Open XML, years after it can no longer help the Office market, because the closed file types previously already killed the market.
Apple has nothing to lose now with DRM going away... but they would have in 2004 or 2005. It's a case now of "we won, lets throw the consumer a bone". I think Amazon should probably get more credit for this than Apple.
