Apple is (apparently) pushing for the end of DRM on music purchased online. If you need an explanation of what this means, you'll find a helpful mp3 here, found via this post on BoingBoing, which is a good place to start if you want thorough reporting on this development.
If you don't want to wade through Steve Jobs's entire article, here's an exerpt that summarizes what he's finally figured out after years of copy-protection craziness:
Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy.
Well, I'm not a fan of Apple, but kudos to Steve Jobs for being the first one at his level on the corporate food chain to realize that stopping illegal music downloading is a battle that the record companies lost before it even started; and the reason for that is because everyone--EVERYONE--does it. It may be illegal, and it might even be immoral, but you can't stop everyone from downloading any more than you can stop everyone from drinking alcohol.
Since just about every form of entertainment has been transferred to digital media somehow, I hope the rest of the industry is paying attention to this. I want to reiterate this one more time for anyone who is involved with, or is thinking about becoming involved with, any field of entertainment:
Any media that you release in digital form, no matter if you do or do not weigh it down with DRM and copy protection, is going to be copied and distributed through channels you do not control. Do not waste your resources fighting this. Accept it. At least in the foreseeable future, it is always going to be the case. Instead, spend your resources finding ways to make it work for you. Yes, this will be hard. But, as we tell aspiring filmmakers, musicians, and authors every day: who ever said it was supposed to be easy? We live in a rapidly changing world. That's how it is. Deal with it.
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