[cunard-n]

This recalls to mind what I think is a very compelling argument found at the beginning of "Freakonomics." Namely that people are not stupid, and they know that if they stop paying for the bagels, the bagels will dissapper. In the book, they examine the pay-rates and stealing rates of a service operated by a guy who just left a can for people to put their payment in and collected it each day when he dropped off the fresh bagels. This was in an office environment. In the book it is very clear that most people, most of the time, will pay if you make it easy for them to. Essentially, isn't that the insight behind I-Tunes? Just enable people to pay, and voila! They pay. I suggest (to the OP) that maybe a better way of thinking of the way forward is to see people as people and make paying you as easy as possible. I definitely applaud your principled stand on DRM and open standards. Bravo.

[jfno67]

I could not agree more. Now that iTunes has dropped DRM, I have paid for all my music since then. The last time I copied something, there were no non-DRM version on iTunes and Amazon was not selling the non-DRM version in Canada. So as a last resort I took a Torrent. Give me an easy way to pay you for what I want and you'll get my money.

[cunard-n]

It's such a tiny country. We must know each other!