The end of DRM as we know this...?

Good news for consumers, bad news for songwriters, publishers and royalty-earning recording artists.

DRM Under Siege: The Yahoo Music Experiment

Jessica Simpson's DRM-free single could be the beginning of the end for copy-protected digital music.  There's something noteworthy about the digital download version of "A Public Affair," the latest single from pop star Jessica Simpson.

No, it's not that the song can be personalized: Simpson and her backup singers recorded 500 first names, from Adriana to Zachary, that Yahoo Music will electronically insert at a dramatic moment in the music for $1.99 a pop.

Far more significant is another feature of the song: it is being distributed as a standard MP3 file, with no digital rights management (DRM) technology. And this comes from none other than Sony BMG, the record label that has taken the most extreme measures to keep customers from making digital copies of its songs.

Cont. at technologyreview.com