Imagine a used car salesman putting up big signs advertising "unbroken cars." That's exactly what Wal-Mart, Amazon, and Microsoft are doing. Their marketing campaigns are based on the fact that their music is DRM-free. Wow, thanks, you've caught up to the gramophone. Not only are you going to sell me the music I'm paying for, but you aren't even going to wrap it up in technology that is defective by design.

Don't get me wrong. Their choice of meeting consumer demands and not using DRM is laudable. But, we must keep the pressure on and eliminate DRM once and for all. To ask for your media and your software to be unencumbered, to be free of unnecessary restrictions is the demand for basic liberties. As citizens that pride ourselves on respect for civil liberties, we shouldn't expect anything less from our companies than we do from our countries.

Let's keep the pressure on. Demand that Amazon removes the DRM from Unbox, its video service. Let Wal-Mart know that we are happy they are selling DRM-free music, but it's just not acceptable for them to also sell DRM-music! Make sure Steve Job's knows that he is the one to blame for Apple using DRM. And, lastly, make sure Microsoft understands it's own message clearly: DRM-media is bad and DRM software is defective by design.