The political strands are tangling thickly. EMI doubtless wishes to distance itself, in consumers' eyes, from the Sony BMG copy-protection debacle. The label reportedly announced that its upcoming copy-protected discs, which heretofore have prevented iPod users from moving tracks to their devices, will work fine with iPods. IN making that announcement, EMI put the burden of work on Apple, saying (as quoted in CNET): "Apple is nearly finished with the technical work necessary to enable consumers to transfer music from content-protected discs to their iPods." Apple, perhaps unappreciative of the implication that inconvenient copy-protection is somehow their fault, and perhaps still stinging from an earlier announcement from EMI that iTMS pricing would change to the labels' advantage next year, slapped EMI in the face: "The information EMI provided regarding iTunes and iPod compatibility with Macrovision's technology is not true and we have no idea why EMI made this remark."

All this is entertaining as hell. But Apple is a poor candidate for high-horsing the subject of DRM. Apple essentially invented the proprietary file-format wars, a state of affairs no less heinous to consumers than copy-protected CDs.