A couple ways to spin this: Jobs gets to reclaim his "out of the box" cred in the face of ongoing complaints and recent European lawsuits levied against Apple for the in-operability of Fairplay DRM on tracks bought from the iTunes Music Store, all by blaming it on the big four…but still, this is significant in that one of the biggest movers and shakers in the digital media download sector has gone on the record stating that DRM doesn't work, will never work, and only hurts the consumer.

From Apple.com, Steve Jobs' Thoughts on Music:

"The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy."