Since you can write to CDs I don’t think the iTunes scheme is unsafe.

That said I prefer buying unprotected CDs – usually at used CD stores where I trade my old ones. My average cost is about $5 a CD, the selection is much better than any online store and there liner notes are important to me. For convenience I make a copy on my digital jukebox in 192 kbps AAC …

I’ve long maintained the primary lesson of DIVX (Circuit City’s DVD with extra DRM) is that “lifetime” means as long as the central DRM system lasts.

Even schemes that provide an “out” (like iTunes writing to CD) still loose functionality of the central system becomes defunct. I know people who have spent hundreds of dollars on iTunes, I really wonder if they will still think it was money well spent 5-10 years down the line (when they have exceeded their 3 computer activations and have strange backwards compatibility problems).

My expectation is that no DRM system will satisfy customers in the long term. Some people may try them now, and a very few won’t get burned. But by and by most people will figure out that DRM dramatically reduces the value of what they are purchasing, and will respond appropriately.

Is there any specific technical information available that tells what will happen if a service like Napster goes out of business? Do we know that the purchased songs will stop working? Has Napster admitted that, or addressed the question at all?