Apple has dropped the use of its FairPlay DRM that restricted the number of copies that could be made of music tracks while adopted variable pricing and giving pricing control back to the labels. This Variety article has a good summary of the situation.
Since the labels are throwing in the towel on DRM for music, it's not so surprising that the RIAA appears to be shifting its focus as well. After all, FairPlay DRM was pretty effective in protecting music obtained from iTunes. It now makes even less sense for the labels to pursue individual file sharers and colleges and universities since eliminating FairPlay DRM can be interpreted as encouraging file sharing, or at least not discouraging it.
And the label's business model is evolving as well:
As I and others have argued, the difficulties of the record labels notwithstanding, the movie studios are not going down the no-DRM road:
The studios have been far more strategic in the development and deployment of various technologies that protect movies and television shows than they have for music. HD and IPTV provide evolutionary opportunities that have been largely absent in the music industry, this despite various attempts to introduce copy protection on physical media.
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