Paul Cornell was asking on Twitter this morning why people hate DRM so much. I can see both sides (I do own a publishing company now, after all), but from a reading point of view my complaint has always been that I prefer to own my books, not borrow them from a publisher who may be able to take them back on a whim, and who cannot be guaranteed to support the hardware and software needed to play them.

This distinction — that DRM’d books and music are effectively only licensed to the consumer, not sold — is a probably at the heart of a potentially explosive court decision that Nicola Griffith talks about here. The full story is in the Wall Street Journal (because big money is involved).

The case, brought by a group of producers who work with Eminem, argued that because the music on iTunes is licensed rather than bought outright a different, and much higher, schedule of payments to the artists should apply. A court in San Francisco (yay!) has agreed.

This being the American legal system, all sorts of shenanigans could take place before the defendants (Universal Music Group, not Apple) have to pay out any money. However, it could cause publishers (of books as well as music) to think twice about their contracts and exactly how they present their products to the public.