If you’ve ever purchased music from the iTunes Store you may know that there are limitations imposed on the files that you get. Without going thru some quality loss, you’re limited to playing it in iTunes or an iPod only.

Recently, a bunch of European governments have started complaining about this. Rightfully so!

And, in response, Steve has posted his thoughts on DRM. His position is that Apple cannot realistically open the FairPlay DRM to other vendors without it resulting in leaks in the protection. So, he argues, music should either be protected with proprietary technology by each vendor (like Apple, Sony, and Microsoft do today) or it should just be protection-free, open to everybody.

Personally, an iTunes Store with no DRM would definitely get my business so I’m really glad that these issues are finally being explored by the European governments. Hopefully, with enough pressure, the music labels will remove the DRM requirements to the music they sell online and Apple will follow suit.

One can only hope that all this nonsense will eventually go away!