Gates says music DRM is a bit of a mess

TECHIE BLOGGERS granted an audience with his His Billgatesness said he looked miffed when he spotted they all bought their Apple Macs with them.

Gates agreed with the whippersnappers' concerns that DRM "causes too much pain for legitmate buyers".

He admitted there are "huge problems” with DRM, a Techcruncher reports.

He said there was nothing out there which was simple or inter-operative enough to thrown at ordinary punters.

Gate's firm is one of the biggest exponents of DRM, which is used to protect music and video files on its Zune store.= and everything.

Michael Arrington, of Techcrunch.com, said that Bill told the meeting that punters wanting to transfer songs from one system to another should to "buy a CD and rip it".

The Beeb quoted Suw, charman, of the Open Rights Group, who pointed out it was a "bit rich of Bill Gates to make his comments given how much DRM is stuffed into Windows Vista". µ