5. Apple TV

Cable TV was going to be dead by Christmas. Instead, Forrester Research reversed its bullish forecast, placing Apple TV behind Jam Packs for GarageBand.

4. Googlephone

Valleywag editor Owen "Wrongway" Thomas repeatedly insisted all year that there was no Googlephone. He was almost right: Google's only built a phone software platform, one which launched with no killer apps or interface innovations. Don't drop your iPhone just yet.

3. Facebook ads

"Once every hundred years, media changes," Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg declared moments before unveiling an overhyped ad system for broadcasting your purchases to your friends' Facebook pages. Even if Zuckerberg proves bizarrely right about media, he picked the wrong day. A hundred years from now, the history books — or whatever replaces them —will talk about YouTube instead.

2. DRM-free music

Cory Doctorow is finally happy, but face it: DRM-restricted music and video files weren't the repression of personal freedom that evangelists like Doctorow made them out to be. They're merely irritating when they don't play. Copyright crusaders are like medical marijuana advocates: You can't argue with them in theory, but in practice you know what they really want is the right to party hearty — or in this case, to download music not just free of DRM, but free of charge.

1. Tesla Roadster

The all-electric sports car really would change the mass public's attitude toward electrics. If only it would hit the road. The company missed its promised ship dates, and genius founder Martin Eberhard has been ousted. To be clear, Tesla's basic electric tech works just fine. Gossip says the motor is so strong that it breaks its gearbox. The company has acknowledged that its custom-made two-speed transmissions have proved a problem.

Special Achievement Award: Pownce

Never confuse celebrity with software. Videogenic Digg founder Kevin Rose announced a new company that would do something radically different. Lead developer Leah Culver topped an online beauty contest, despite posting dubious integer-rounding code to her blog. But to date, I still don't even know what Pownce is — NO DON'T TELL ME LA LA LA LA NOT LISTENING! Uncov writer Ted Dziuba explains it for me. As for Pownce's cyberlebrity status, Ted adds, "their daily traffic is now less than 2girsl1cup."

(Illustration by Uncov. Photo of Google Android by Mobile magazine. Photo of Leah Culver by Brian Solis)

But Google, desperate to protect its image amid slipping customer-satisfaction ratings, erred in its too-generous refund policy. Internet zealots opposed to digital-rights management, or DRM, software have leapt on the episode to highlight the supposed evils of DRM. Once a service dies, consumers are left with useless files — as well they should. We say caveat emptor — especially the empty-headed. Customers stupid enough to shell out money for DRM-protected content, especially to a lame service like Google Video, deserve what they get.

1. Is EMI crazy for doing this?
No—for once, they're actually ahead of the curve. Positioning DRM-free music as a premium product—with better encoding rates and higher per-track prices—has its risks, but they'll likely pay off. After all, this move is one of the few times that a major label has actually acted as if it trusts consumers, and teaming up with the market leader in digital-music distribution is a signal that EMI wants to forge forward in terms of musical distribution. Sure, DRM-free files will make it slightly easier for a user to e-mail a copy of "Smile" to her friend who just went through a breakup, but we don't see entire chunks of people running off to trade their recently purchased files. And those listeners who want to swap entire discographies through private BitTorrent networks will probably continue to do so, whether for reasons of frugality or out of desire for even higher-quality formats like FLAC.

2. Why didn't rates for albums change?
Apple has been getting a lot of flak for offering per-track downloads and taking a bite out of the album market. The EMI deal makes high-quality DRM-free albums standard on iTunes, and not changing a premium price for a premium offering is yet another way for the iTunes Store to encourage people to buy albums instead of cherry-picking songs, thus showing the major labels that they're in at least one fight together. (See also the "Complete My Album" incentive offered to single-track buyers last week.)

3. What does this mean for consumers? Do they even care about what label an artist is on, or about DRM?
People who want to pay for music (yes, there are still a few out there) will have even more incentive to buy EMI's albums digitally, and consumers who were, in the past, stymied by attempts to move their iTunes-purchased music around—whether to different computers or to portable players that aren't necessarily the iPod—will have a slightly easier time doing so now. (Even the Zune will be able to play the unprotected AACs offered by iTunes.) And again, the idea of a major label viewing a consumer as a trusted entity, as opposed to a potential target for lawsuits, should pay off in PR points, at the very least.

4. Are other labels going to follow suit?
It makes sense that they would, although we'd expect indies to migrate to the DRM-free world more quickly than the majors. Many of them already distribute their music in unprotected format through services like eMusic and the forthcoming Other Music digital store. Hypebot today also mentioned rumblings from Universal Music Group about offering certain parts of its back catalog—including its classical offerings—without digital-rights protection. But even though Jobs has said that he expects half of iTunes' catalog to be available without DRM by year's end, we don't see all four major labels moving to DRM-free downloads for at least another two years, if not longer.

5. What about other stores?
So far, the UK store 7Digital has announced that it will offer restriction-free downloads at an even higher quality—although it's clearly appealing to the demographic of Damon Albarn fans, as its entire DRM-free catalog at this point consists of The Good, The Bad, and The Queen. (UPDATE: A reader e-mailed us to let us know that 7Digital is actually run by EMI—which makes sense, given that Albarn's outfit played the launch press conference announcing the DRM-lift.)

6. So when will I be able to buy those Beatles MP3s?
Nicoli said today that Apple and EMI were "working on" getting the Beatles catalog—which will allegedly be remastered—to the iTunes Store's shelves. If the Beatles show up on iTunes first, you'll actually have to buy Beatles AACs. AAC stands for Advanced Audio Coding, and it's the format that iTunes uses for its downloads; audiophiles aren't completely sold on the quality of those files, though, so if you have extra-sensitive ears, you might want to wait until the remasters come to CD.

Earlier: EMI Goes DRM-Free, Says To Online Retail, "C'mon, Jump In"

Among all record labels 48% of all executives thought ending DRM would boost download sales - though this was 58% at the larger labels. Outside the record labels 73% of those questioned thought dropping DRM would be a boost for the whole market.

Among all those questioned, 70% believed that the future of downloadable music lay in making tracks play on as many different players as possible. But 40% believed it would take concerted government or consumer action to bring this about.

Jobs used to be all about mystique; despite his accomplished hucksterism, his personal and organizational opacity was a welcome counterpoint to the far more common transparency addiction now infecting the industry. Unfortunately, he's recently started behaving more like a typical tech company CEO, i.e. hyping unfinished products like the iPhone and AppleTV. Now we have grandiose pronouncements coming down from the temple mount to liberate us all from the chains of intellectual property prison. Is Jobs just a plebe-happy partisan who wants bottom-up change? Or has he lost patience with cracking his own contractual shackles in regular dealings with record companies, and so seeks an end run via grassroots groundswell? It doesn't really matter, because once New Steve sees how much attention "Thoughts on Music" garnered, you can bet that his "Thoughts" will get a regular airing whenever someone else's thoughts are proving an inconvenience. Come back, Old Steve. Still, at least Fake Steve Jobs is thinking too — he suggests that the best solution to the DRM problem is to cease using iTunes, stop buying iPods, and cease purchasing music altogether.

1. I love you, Steve!
2. Wow, look at all this reflexive, slavish adoration.
3. I love you, Steve!

So far, the RIAA has not responded, though they did recently recommend that CDs should cost more.

[Photo: Getty]

Anyway, just a case of "Why don't they build the plane out of the Black Box?"

From: Windows Media License Agreements
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006
To: Windows Media License Agreements
Subject: Status - Windows Media DRM circumvention

MICROSOFT CONFIDENTIAL

Dear Windows Media DRM Licensee,

As you may know, on August 28 2006 Microsoft released an update of the individualized blackbox component (IBX) of Windows Media DRM to address a circumvention of the Windows Media DRM system. Unfortunately, a new version of the tool that circumvents Windows Media DRM technology on Windows PCs has surfaced, breaking the content protection that our content partners apply to their intellectual property such as music or video content.

As we did with the initial circumvention, Microsoft will use the built-in renewability features of Windows Media DRM to deploy an update to address this circumvention. We have teams working around the clock on this project, and this update will include incrementing the Security Version of the individualized blackbox component, which should ease deployment and make it easier to detect the update remotely. We will continue to work closely with you to inform you of our progress and help you update your systems as needed. As always, we appreciate your feedback and ongoing support.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding this circumvention or related updates, please contact (email removed)

Kind regards,

Windows Media Licensing Department

Microsoft Consumer Media Technology

• Animal Magazine editors sneak into Apple's 24-hour store without waiting in line. Then they pull the classy move of setting its website as the test computers' home page. They also confirm that the SNL staff shouldn't head out without makeup. [Animal Magazine via Blogebrity]
• Boing Boing gets giddy over DRM protestors (pictured doing an Intel ad), because no cause is worth fighting for more than your right to play Beyonce on your iPod. [Boing Boing]
• Web 2.0 jokes make it to the hipster lit comics. LOOK WHAT YOU PEOPLE HAVE WROUGHT. [Cat and Girl]
• Jobster acquires Jobby, making the cutest headline ever. [TechCrunch]
• Streamcast, the guys behind old-and-busted file-sharer Morpheus, have expanded their lawsuit against Kazaa, Skype and Skype's founders to include Skype's new owner, eBay — or as Techdirt puts it, "Streamcast realizes eBay is the one with the money." [Techdirt]

Google has developed its own digital-rights-management software to protect downloaded videos from piracy.

Techdirt's Mike says, "We now have yet another incompatible copy protection system that is likely to lock people in (while also opening up new security holes)."

To implement DRM is basically to do evil. Locks on downloaded videos could make them unplayable on certain software, could stifle free speech, and could ruin all the bootleg fun.

Google to Offer Video Downloads, Software That Rivals Microsoft's [WSJ]
Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss: Google Building Content Locks? [Techdirt]