Adam Engst has written up a detailed piece on the iTunes Music Store. At first, when I read a shorter summary of the DRM applied to the tracks purchased through the store, I referred to it as “heinous.” Looking back, I realize that was too harsh. My personal feeling is that all DRM is heinous, but as far as DRM goes, the system applied by Apple isn’t too restrictive.

Of course, the fundamental problem with DRM is that five or ten years down the road, the tracks that you paid hard money for could be members of the dead media collection, depending upon industry developments. Obviously if you burn them all onto CDs you’re probably still in good shape, but the bottom line is you’re buying music in a closed format that is inevitably doomed to obsolesence. This won’t bother everyone, but it does bother me.