Steve Jobs has written an article which has been posted to Apple.com, the letter named "Thoughts on Music" addresses recent calls for Apple to open the DRM on iTunes allowing devices other than the iPod to play songs bought from the iTunes Store.
In the article Jobs outlines why the iTunes Store features DRM and how it works. He goes on to explain three possible solutions to DRM:
1) Continue as now, with each music company having its own player and DRM system, none of them able to integrate with each other.
2) License FairPlay to other companies allowing music purchased from the iTunes Store to work on players other then the iPod.
"The most serious problem is that licensing a DRM involves disclosing some of its secrets to many people in many companies, and history tells us that inevitably these secrets will leak. .... Apple has concluded that if it licenses FairPlay to others, it can no longer guarantee to protect the music it licenses from the big four music companies"
3) Scrap DRM entirely, Jobs and Apple appear to be big fans of this but naturally the music companies are not.
"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."