No more DRM music…and the pirates will still shrug

TechCrunch announces that EMI will be selling DRM-free music on iTunes for $1.29 a pop. This may be the beginning of the end of having to type an Apple password to listen to a song you bought.

Down in the comments, Mike Arrington says:

People will no longer have any real argument to using bittorent or allofmp3 based on DRM alone. I expect this to have a significant upwards impact on sales.

They won’t need a “real” argument. People will come up with 129 excuses and arguments. One for every cent they don’t want to have to pay if they can get away with it. There’s a satisfaction to “sticking it” to corporate America and getting sumthin’ for nuthin’ that won’t sway some folks. I think there are those that will always pay, and there are those that will always think they are entitled to 100% free commercial media (and they’ll come up with whatever rationalization they need to justify their actions). The sales will increase by those folks in the middle of the pack.

Is it possible that this is a move to eliminate that excuse? What happens if music is DRM-free and iPod is still the #1 music player by a wide margin and people are still filling it with bittorrent content?