iRights?

That Beatles rumor I mentioned a couple of posts ago? More savvy insiders now say that the EMI/Apple announcement won't have anything to do with the Beatles after all--but it will, in many ways, be even bigger if it's true. Word is that Apple and EMI are going to announce an end to Digital Rights Management encoding on EMI tracks downloaded through iTunes.

So why is this big? Because, unlike CDs or any other pre-recorded medium, mp3's are not currently your property. You can't listen to them in any device you wish, you can't transfer them to others if you wish to sell them--you're extremely limited in what you can do.

The end to DRM, if it happens, would actually be tremendously liberating for music purchasing. I currently don't buy digital downloads because of this limitations; if the music offered to me was free of DRM, I'd buy it right away. Until that time, I'll buy CDs and burn them to mp3 myself.

Tomorrow will tell the tale; it'd be great if both rumors were true, but I'm putting my money on the DRM thing having a greater chance of coming to pass.