Whatever Wednesday: DRM-free iTunes

(On Whatever Wednesdays I write--you guessed it!--whatever.)

One of the fundamental rules of life is that iTunes has songs for $.99.

Not anymore, they don't.

At Apple's last appearance at Macworld Expo, they announced that their entire song catalog on iTunes will be offered DRM free.

DRM, or Digital Rights Management, is when a song has preventive measures installed for copying. In my opinion, it's a bunch of crap. It means you can't recopy a song on someone else's computer because of the encoding. The measure was started to stop music pirating. It's been working great. [/sarcasm]

Anyway, all songs on iTunes are formatted with this.
Because everyone has obviously been bitching about it Apple decided to change.

Not for free, of course.

Songs that will be DRM-free will be $1.29. Say whaaat? (More about the more expensive iTunes Plus here.)
Protected songs will either be the usual $.99 or $.69, depending on the popularity of the song.

I think it's kind of ridiculous that we have to pay more to be able to copy our music wherever. Music pirates figure out ways to get past everything; why punish the rest of us with DRM?

If you can't tell, I'm all for internet freedom, and this makes me verrrry angry. And this picture made me laugh. Kudos to the makers.

I'd love to hear someone else's opinion. Is this a bunch of bullcrap or is it a good idea? What do you think of DRM?