Too bad Steve Jobs doesn't have a ready antidote for Microsoft's new Vista operating system, because his latest idea for the music industry is pure genius: Let companies that sell songs over the Internet do away with antipiracy software. His argument has the virtue of simplicity. The software doesn't work to begin with, he notes, so why let 'digital rights management (DRM)' hold back the record business? One reason DRM doesn't work, he notes, is that most of the music sold by recording companies is on compact discs that contain no copy-protection software. Jobs never once mentioned his nemesis in Redmond in the 1800-word essay he posted to the Internet ' 'Thoughts on Music' -- but to many of us the very term 'digital rights management' captures the spirit of Microsoft's business model. Indeed, if the software giant had its way, we probably would not be able pee without activating some sort of digital permissioning system on the rim of household toilets. Do I exaggerate? Not much, as anyone who has used the Windows Media Player will attest. This is a virtual playback device that seems never to have met a third-party encryption it could not do business with. Vista Onslaught Jobs' radical argument could conceivably sway the music moguls in the end, since, unlike Microsoft, they do not have delusions about taking a piece of every digital transaction that is yet to occur in this world. But even Jobs may not be able to thwart the onslaught of Vista, the latest gratuitous upgrade from Windows that requires prodigious amounts of RAM and processing power just to keep it from sputtering and wheezing. Apple has warned iPod and iTunes users of incompatibilities with Vista, but Jobs might have said as much about the thousands of third-party applications that are going
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