Levy: Death to DRM? - Newsweek Steven Levy - MSNBC.com:
Still, something sticks in the craw here. If the higher price were presented solely as a consequence of the higher sound quality of songs in the new format (which cost more to process and send because of the increased file size), that would be one thing. But both EMI and Apple see the new format as having two selling points--the sound quality and the lack of DRM. I find it curious that people are being asked to pay for the removal of something that the sellers now tacitly agree is a failure. If DRM doesn’t stop piracy and instead hampers people from legal enjoyment of music they pay for, there’s simply no justification to charge people more to buy songs without it. Surely Apple and EMI are not implying that people who pay 99 cents for songs are crooks who can’t be trusted, and those who pay $1.29 are pure souls who would never think of infringing.
Interestingly, the higher price does not kick in when you buy an entire album. When you purchase a whole album on iTunes, the non-DRM, high-quality format is available at the same price.
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