A lot of talk the past few days has surround the Librarian of Congress carving out some exceptions to the DMCA but a number of potential exemptions were left out. The hard working Mike Masnick over at Techdirt breaks them down. The biggest issue left alone this round: DRM servers that get turned off and your content needs to phone home for you to actually play a song or video. Unfortunately this DRM can’t be broken. So “Plays for Sure” and future DRM schemes are essentially born obsolete, waiting for their owners to discontinue support.
I’d bet that somewhere in the back of Steve Jobs’ mind this concern helped him to fight the music companies over DRM. Apple is not particularly reserved in moving on (original iPhone won’t get iOS4, OS X left OS9 in the dust, Intel switch meant no more updates for G4/5) and if the business of selling content fades from Apple’s vision, they won’t be stuck with as much cleanup of those left behind. It’s just not simple.