blufive | More DRM

Tom Coates at plasticbag.org suggests another approach to proprietary copy-protection schemes:

The fact is we shouldn't think in [in terms of choosing one format] at this stage. We should be trying to create miscegenated musical libraries that we expect digital music manufacturers to support all of, not just some as it suits them or as it suits whichever company ends up dominating the market. We've been down this path before - the company that owns the monopoly has the least to gain from a rapid pace of innovation, the least to gain from being standards compliant. [...] These things are too important to be left in the hands of one company. We need to have consumer choice at the level of which DRM (or lack of DRM) we're comfortable with buying, we need variety so that different types of audio file can be released via a variety of business models, we need variety - fundamentally - because otherwise we all lose.