Sony BMG is the ONLY major label who still refuses to sell songs without Digital Rights Management, since a few days ago Warner Music annouced they are dropping DRM for music sales.
http://opinion.latimes.com/bitplayer...-goes-drm.html
The music business is being dragged into the present kicking and screaming. In Oct, 1998 the RIAA sued Diamond RIO - the makers of the original MP3 player - in an attempt to prevent it from ever being sold. The RIAA lost the first round and then agreed to form a group to examine the legal methods of developing a new way of "securing" digital download. That group has been inactive since 2001.
And yet even though 3 of the 4 major music publishers in the world have seen teh writing on the wall and given up on DRM, still there was almost a draconian Copyright Nillintroduced into the legislature just before Christmas. Still new TVs and High Def DVD players are developed around DRM.
The tighter content industries (which really, if you think about them, have only existed for a century and exist only because technology came along which allowed music to be stored) continue to hold onto their antiquated methods, the more people feel alienated by them. The can thing of it 2 ways: either like they are squeezing mud and the harder they squeeze the more oozes through their fingers; or it is like they are holding a bird, and the more they squeeze it, well...