The idea of ditching ‘digital rights management’ for music downloads is rapidly changing from dream to business reality– and faster than anybody might have hoped. Amazon said yesterday that it would open an online store that only stocks MP3 music files without copying restrictions. That would be huge news, except that Amazon is only catching up with Apple, which announced in early April that it would offer DRM-free downloads by the end of this month. Both stores have the public backing of EMI, one of the four big record labels, which yesterday also said it would sell unrestricted music downloads at some European sites. This should delight customers, who will no longer have to worry about being able to listen to their song files on their next music player or their computer. But it must unsettle many music industry executives. Abandoning the copy-control systems meant to stop people from sharing a new digital purchase on the Internet– but which also keep buyers from listening to these downloads on unauthorized hardware or software– remains heresy in much of Hollywood. But when the biggest music download store, one of the biggest CD retailers and a Big Four […]