It's official: all of EMI's music on the iTunes store are nw available without copy-protection. This means that once you download an EMI-produced song from iTunes, you can play it on any capable media player--like AAC-compatible smartphones and PDAs. You'll have to pay slightly $0.30 more, but the unlocked songs boast twice the audio quality as their DRM-protected counterparts (256 kbps).

Hopefully, Steve Jobs and EMI's little announcement will be successful; if the profitability of DRM-free digital music is proven, perhaps it will mark the end of copy-protection in general. The animosity between content owners rigorously protecting their copyrights and consumers angered by inconvenient protections may become a thing of the past.

If you're buying for a new smartphone or PDA, get one that can play AACs. You'll now be able to play EMI songs you purchase from the iTunes store on it.