Napster (NASDAQ: NAPS) -- the mother of all file-sharing services that in 10 years' time has found itself one among many digital-music services struggling for its very survival -- is hoping its new move will attract more users. Today, Napster CEO Chris Gorog said the company is shifting to MP3 downloads free of digital-rights-management software [subscription required], or DRM.

The move is expected to occur sometime in the second quarter, but Napster has yet to finalize the arrangements with some of the four major music companies - Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE), Warner Music Group, EMI Group and Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group. The final three on this list recently began selling MP3s on the download service available through Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN). Sony has yet to report plans to sell its tracks as MP3s, but is reportedly expected to come forward soon.

Will 2007 go down in history as the year when DRM (digital rights management) went down the tubes as record labels finally succumbed to declining CD sales and customer complaints and started releasing music in unprotected digital form?

There have been scores of gadget fans and music fans that have waited for this for years. They don't like being faced to purchase music and then have it only work on one device or expire sometime in the future. Customers clearly want to "buy" music and own it to use on any device they want, anywhere and at anytime. Sure, Apple Computer, Inc.'s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iTunes store sells a heckuva lot of digital songs that are protected -- could they sell more with unprotected downloads, though?

The music industry may have no other choice but to release music as fully unprotected digital content that will allow consumers to use it how *they* want (imagine that) instead of being fully controlled by how the content owners want consumers to use content. You buy a song and you purchase the right from the content owner to use that material on your devices as opposed to just an iPod other digital content system. Will this happen is sales of physical media like CDs continue to fall? Will Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Apple have issues due to this or will both simply become conduits for buying unprotected content (just another *pipe*)?