Apple wins! Apple wins!

I saw an article on Ars Technica today about how two very large lobbying groups in France and Germany have joined with a few E.U. nations in pressuring Apple to "open up" FairPlay, their DRM scheme. Apple is, predictably, telling them to pound sand.

I'm just this guy, right? But I'm going to say that if this actually happens, the DRM wars are basically over and Apple won. Other music player manufacturers might or might not license FairPlay, and other content creators might or might not embrace FairPlay, but that would pretty much be the end of other DRM schemes. The music world would be split into FairPlay v. unencumbered without any real space for third alternatives. If you can get your music onto iPods, wouldn't you? If you're telling yourself that the only reason people are buying iPods instead of your player is because they're locked into iTunes but you could get around that legally, wouldn't you? And once you've made that jump, whichever camp you were previously in, why would you absorb the expense in time and money of maintaining whatever the other DRM scheme was?

That's just my take on it, you know. I'm not an MBA or anything.