Over a year ago now, EMI and Apple announced DRM-free music downloads. Ignited by EMI, the trend spread to all the major labels by January of this year, when Amazon started offering a full catalog of unencrypted MP3s.

At this point, there's no going back, and with today's announcement by Napster, the steady migration to DRM free (for purchased tracks) continues.

Interestingly, the move to DRM free has proved far more palatable than the dire predictions. Bill Rosenblatt, author of DRM Watch and an expert on content protection, notes, "The industry has finally been able to get some hard data about how removing DRM restrictions from legitimately purchased tracks affects piracy... The statistics show that there's no effect on piracy."

That's an incredibly important takeaway.

DRM has been pushed by content owners to protect markets, often to the detriment of consumer usage allowances. If DRM is not protecting a market or business model meaningfully (as it does with subscription or rental models), there's little reason to impose a frustrating experience on consumers who purchase content through legitimate channels.

Even within the iTunes ecosystem, which is one of the least intrusive DRM implementations, consumer frustrations exist. And that's before we start talking about more maddening implementations, usually protected by Windows DRM. In fact, I'm willing to bet that Bruce Banner purchased a couple Windows DRM tracks.

So, the question of DRM for purchased content turns to Hollywood. (Despite the Hulk reference, I'll set movies aside for today, and focus on TV content.)

For all intents and purposes, TV is broadcast in the clear. There's no shortage of sources to populate pirate networks with TV content, and not surprisingly, pirate networks are overflowing with deep libraries of TV content.

Looking at music's experience, I'll ask the question.... Does it make sense to protect TV shows that a legitimate consumer wants to acquire?

Probably not.

Given the volume of TV content on pirate networks, it's unlikely that offering TV shows unencrypted would add to the piracy problem -- any more than offering unencrypted music has. In all likelihood, the sale of unprotected TV shows would accelerate the legitimate market somewhat, because the utility of the legitimate product would be higher, comparable with the utility of content acquired illegally.

Here's my prediction... We're within 18 months of a world in which an enterprising licensing executive strikes a deal to sell unencrypted TV shows through a prominent web outlet. It may be billed as a trial or test, but it's coming.