DRM losing out? I believe Apple for a change

Ever wonder how the menu item "Deauthorize computer" in iTunes works? I've never figured that out because I don't purchase music from iTunes - didn't want to get locked down on a device (not to mention, I am not a fan of iTunes). (De)authorizing a computer for purchased music never made sense to me because I've always thought iTunes/iPod's DRM FairPlay was like its rival Play for sure where music devices (like the Zens) are tracked as well - the distributer can control what songs you can play on these devices, for how long, or how many of these devices can play a purchased song... until I came a cross this article today, explains everything.

What's interesting is that it also explains why Steve Jobs' claim of support of DRM-free music on iTunes is credible. It has never been about locking people down to Apple's device, in this case, the iPod.


I'm old fashion in this regard. I buy used CDs, rip high bit rate for PC and my higher capacity iPod, low bit rate for my Shuffle for long trips (cause the Shuffle has excellent battery life), so I hardly ever purchase downloads; and when I do, they always let me burn it back to a CD even when they are DRM protected. So I still don't understand what's the point.