Stephen Wildstrom emailed me his comments regarding my post on electronic music distribution formats and proprietary digital rights management tools (ie, limiting our fair use rights):

Actually, WMA/Janus is no more or less proprietary than AAC/FairPlay, except that Microsoft owns both the format and the DRM, while with AAC, Dolby owns the format and Apple owns the DRM. WMA and AAC are both freely licensable, the former from Microsoft, the latter through the MPEG-4 patent pool.
I don’t want to rescue anyone from FairPlay. It’s a perfectly fine DRM as DRMs go. I just think Apple has to open it, in the sense of licensing to all comers, if they really want to compete.
In writing the piece, I had no intention of getting into the virtues of DRM. Mostly that was because I just didn’t have space, but partly it’s because if we want digital content that is, like the overwhelming bulk of stuff that people seem to want, controlled by movie studios and record companies, we’re going to have to put up with DRM. With all respect to Prof. Lessig, his view of fair use seems to be based more on wishful thinking than law. And while there is some attraction to Creative Commons as a concept, I haven’t seen a rush of artists–at least not those who expect to get paid–to it.
INDUCE, by the way, did not pass and is dead for this year. I think it will be a lot tougher next year because the tech industry, which bizarrely let Microsoft take a leadership position on the bill, has woken up. Microsoft claimed that it had the backing of all the companies in the business software alliance, but they seem to have avoided asking Intel, which is staunchly opposed. Even within Microsoft, the company’s backing for INDUCE, which seems to be driven by the legal department, is very controversial. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft joins a flock of tech companies that are filing amicus briefs opposing the MPAA’s petition for a write of certiorari in the Grokster case.