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However, I believe that they're coming close to blasting away even this last vestige of any foot-like material.

Here's my bold prediction: DRM will kill the music industry.

Already consumers are starting to revolt at the inane restrictions that DRM inflicts on them and it won't be long before that revolt starts to hit the revenues of recording companies even harder than piracy allegedly has.

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I mean look at the way things are...

Your average "heavy" music consumer has changed a *lot* in the past decade or so.

If you go back just a few short years, a music buyer probably had a CD player in their home system, a cassette player in the car, and a tape-based walkman.

To feed these devices they just bought a CD and dubbed a couple of tapes from it -- often making compilation cassettes of just the tracks the liked the most.

This diet of format-shifted music was supplemented by a few tracks recorded from FM radio or lifted from CDs borrowed from a friend.

Now however, the average young music consumer has a CD player in their car, an iPod, a CD player in their home system and probably a PC they like to use to store and play music occasionally.

But (and here's the kicker), DRM is screwing up their lives.

No longer can they buy a single CD and format-shift or copy that disk so as to listen to the music they've bought on all their devices. Instead, they're forced to mess around with "illegal" ripping software or just download tracks that have already been ripped from the Net.

Folks who would otherwise rush out and buy a new album have to think-twice about the practicalities of doing so. Of course they could always buy two copies of the CD and download a version already encoded for their iPod from iTunes -- but you're talking *BIG* money because you're effectively buying the same stuff three times!

My bet is that people are simply going to look at this as utter greed on the part of the recording companies and say "stuff you!".

The result will probably leave record execs scratching their heads and asking "Why is piracy increasing? We're using strong DRM... We're selling our music through the Net like they asked..."

Of course they'll be too busy reloading their foot-shootin irons to realise that people don't want to (and won't) pay three times for exactly the same piece of music.

Isn't it funny how monopolies attract really stupid people?

Are you being put off by DRM on CDs and commercial download services?

If you have two CD players, an MP3 player and an iPod - will you be prepared to pay again and again for the same music, or will you break the law by copying your CDs and/or format-shifting?

Or will you simply voice your objection by either not buying the music at all, or perhaps recording it from radio/TV, or downloading it for free from the Net?

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