Yahoo, of late, has been pressing the music companies to give up on DRM loaded music downloads, looking to push standard mp3's out to the consumer. Their argument is basically that DRM protection does little to curb pirating, since it's easy to get around and only one person has to start sharing illegally a song before it does its damage, but that DRM hurts and restricts many of the legitimate uses a consumer has for his/her music when purchased legally. If one could download DRM free mp3's, stream music in the house, hack up the song with dj software, and make a movie, or load it onto any personal mp3 player. They also hint that managing DRM is expensive to a company like Yahoo, as well as poor competitive strategy when big players like Emusic (White Stripes, Lil' Jon), are offering the standard mp3's.
Sounds like a good argument, and a nice fight for Yahoo to wage for us, even if it comes down to selfish reasons on their part, but here's the funny thing: to promote the concept, they're selling a DRM free single of Jessica Simpson, complete with personalization of your name in the song "A Public Affair." All for $1.99, a dollar more but going towards the personalization, not the DRM free mp3 that we should all be entitled to.
