I missed a really great post by John Gruber from this past summer where he takes the music industry to task for their griping that Apple’s iTunes has too much power in the world of online music distribution. Basically, they want an open, “interoperable” digital rights management (DRM) scheme. Unfortunately, DRM is, by its very nature, proprietary. It builds a little wall around media files that only lets in the right paying customer. If you put the plans to that wall out there for everyone to see, then all the little cracks and openings in that wall will be visible to everyone. An open DRM is a broken DRM and that’s the same as no DRM, and that’s clearly not what the music industry wants.

Says Gruber:

The industry’s idea of a “perfect” DRM scheme is one that is not controlled by either Apple or Microsoft, and which gives only them (the record industry) complete control over what users can do with their downloads. Such a scheme does not exist, and it does not exist because it isn’t possible.

And then…

The music industry’s insistence upon DRM is what put the [iTunes Music Store] in the position that Apple now enjoys; the record industry is decrying a lock-in advantage that they themselves handed to Apple so they could deny their customers (i.e. us, the people who listen to music) the interoperability they now say they want.

DRM is, in my opinion, bad eight ways ’till Tuesday for nearly everyone, but none of those ways are nearly as delicious as how it maintains such a concentration of power in the hands of Apple and how the music guys absolutely hate that.