Incompatibility slowing growth of digital music

By Brian Garrity
NEW YORK (Billboard) - The market for legitimate music downloads is booming, but the stumbling block of incompatibility will not go away.
Just ask anyone who has ever tried to put a Napster track on an iPod.
At the heart of the problem are duelling digital-rights-management (DRM) systems from bitter rivals Apple Computer and Microsoft. Files using either company's DRM are incompatible with players that support the other DRM.
The recording industry and many of its digital retail partners flagged this problem 18 months ago. Today they are no closer to finding a solution, thanks to a lack of co-operation among the tech heavyweights.
Experts say the DRM dilemma might not be resolved for another two years.
"It's not going to go away quickly," Napster chief technology officer William Pence said at a recent DRM conference in New York.
DRM technology wraps around song files to block mass copying and peer-to-peer distribution of music downloads. It dictates when, where and how music files can be consumed legitimately. more... http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2005-08-13T025032Z_01_DIT310139_RTRIDST_0_OUKIN-UK-DOWNLOADS.XML