So, Bill Gates met with a select bunch of ‘influential’ bloggers to chat about stuff yesterday.

As reported on the BBC, and several of the select bloggers sites, Bill dissed DRM.

Quotes from techcrunch:

Gates said that no one is satisfied with the current state of DRM, which “causes too much pain for legitmate buyers” while trying to distinguish between legal and illegal uses. He says no one has done it right, yet. There are “huge problems” with DRM, he says, and “we need more flexible models, such as the ability to “buy an artist out for life” (not sure what he means). He also criticized DRM schemes that try to install intelligence in each copy so that it is device specific.”

His short term advice: “People should just buy a cd and rip it. You are legal then.”

He ended by saying “DRM is not where it should be, but you won’t get me to say that there should be usage models and different payment models for usage. At the end of the day, incentive systems do make a difference, but we don’t have it right with incentives or interoperability.”

Meanwhile, in other news it was reported that getting sand in your eye is unpleasant and that the earth is round.

Now then, I wonder if this about face has anything to do with the Zune getting panned and the iTunes/iPod juggernaut. No no, of course not, how silly of me.

Regarding ripping CD’s, I thought it was one of the things record co’s were getting all twisted up about?

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