DRM in 2008 - the first skirmishes...

I mentioned this not so long ago and while it has long been obvious that the recording industry and its consumers were in no way in agreement about DRM 2008 looks like the year which it will become a real issue.
That will be much to the detriment of the former because they apparently thought they could continue to run rough-shod over their consumers (and often their artists as well) as they had arguably done for decades. The former, rather predictably I think, responded by deciding that they too could play the game and now artists are starting to consider doing without the very same. As a service industry - for that is what major labels, in particular, now are - and one with a rather poor recent record for spotting trends in artists, or even more tellingly technology, it is surely vulnerable for it risks simultaneously losing the confidence of both its suppliers and consumers.

Today, in the UK at least, some guidelines for consultation and further discussion were published by the government and they make quite interesting reading. Here is the BBC news post about these proposals and I' m quite sure these will only make the whole thing a much hotter potato still! It is a matter that certainly needs to be properly addressed sooner rather than later; don't expect any easy consensus this year however.
The longer it goes on, one near certainty is the greater will be the damage to the traditional music industry in the long term and some predict that, within a decade, the CD will be defunct. It is quite plausible, and wholly so were it not for the persistence of vinyl; far fewer have said that in a decade there will also be no longer be any 'major labels' and that is something that, while I'm not one to place bets, for cash or favours or anything else, I think that I would regard as the least surprising result.